Waste, Fraud, and Media Slant

Today's front page of the New York Times boasts this headline: 'Breathtaking' Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid. It is accompanied by an arial picture of a bunch of trailers, the token of the "Waste, Fraud, and Abuse" that accompanied the Aid to Katrina stricken areas. Right in the caption of the picture is this quote:

Scams, schemes and bureaucratic bungles after Hurricane Katrina have cost taxpayers up to $2 billion, including $250,000 a month to store about 10,000 empty mobile homes at an airfield in Hope, Ark.

So this is "breathtaking." Sure $2 billion in any other era of government spending and balance sheets. However, we seem to be carrying a bigger burden of almost $300 billion these days in Iraq. With very little to show for it, save the heads of some personas non gratas, (with the exception of THE persona non grata we were after in the first place).

Also, constantly rearing its head in the news is the $8 billion UN oil for food scandal.

Somehow, someway, even larger egregious example (besides the entire Iraq war) of "Waste, Fraud, and Abuse" is occuring in Iraq. Not only is there prefferential treatment in selecting Contractors in Iraq, but this prefferential treatment has cost the U.S. taxpayer upwards of $8.8 billion.

So why doesn't the rest of the "media" find that figure "breathtaking." By my calculations it should be found to be at least 4 times more breathtaking than the Katrina Kaper. Yet, in today's media, we find that there is an inverse proportionality to the quantity of ink spilled versus the level of breathtaking corruption a story lends.