It-Drives-Me-Nuts Dept., revisited

Et tu, NPR?

On Morning Edition today, they were interviewing two economists (of different persuasions), to analyze Trump's recent 'economic policy (sic)' speech.  They played the quote where he said, basically, "and we're going to eliminate the Death Tax - no workers should have to pay this, after paying taxes all their lives."

And the crowd goes wild.

The economists then had a back-and-forth, treating this nonsense (intentional or ignorant?) as a serious proposition. "Well, the Estate Tax only kicks in on estates worth many millions of dollars."  "Yes, but even a small business person with two or three car dealerships would be subject to the tax."  Etc. etc. etc.

Missing the point entirely.

It would not have taken that long for someone to mention that, of course, the 'Death Tax' is another right-wing dog-whistle (see also 'partial-birth abortion') designed to inflame the uninformed. 

Considering that economists say that a major proportion of our fellow Americans couldn't find a way to cobble together a couple of thousand dollars in an emergency, I can pretty much guarantee that a major proportion of Trump's cheering crowds will never (well, maybe in their dreams) have an estate subject to the Estate Tax.

But, no, another opportunity was lost to insert Reality into what has become a non-Reality-based campaign.   Then again, maybe I'm confusing today's NPR with the NPR of Yesteryear.

But wait, there's more.

A few minutes later, in a recap of the news, they mentioned that 'two families who lost sons in (wait for it) Benghazi have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Hillary Clinton', then moved on.

If only they could have taken 8 seconds to add, 'of course, the lawsuit was brought by Larry Klayman, the notorious right-wing hack who has been persecuting the Clintons with spurious lawsuits for decades.'

It drives me nuts.

At least, with the Romans, the masses got BOTH bread and circuses.  No bread for you!