USA Today Features a Shutdown Clock?!

A PJM reader advised us of the above image on the USA Today homepage, which we screencapped. In his email to us, he wrote:

I was really surprised to see a debt clock displayed prominently on USA today.com’s website. Only it wasn’t a debt clock but a COST OF THE SHUTDOWN CLOCK that displays the cost of the work that the government CANT DO. I have a screenshot I can email. If you hurry you can go to usatoday and see for yourself.. right under the main lead story pic.

Here is the email I sent USA Today:

I was stunned to see something so Orwellian on USA Today, because USA Today tends to shoot straighter than many other news organizations. Displayed prominently on your homepage is a SHUTDOWN COST CALCULATOR which “shows totals since Oct. 1 and covers the cost in work and services the government can’t do while it furloughs 800,000 workers.”

You mean savings to taxpayers right? Surely instead of costs, you mean savings. No one could be so Orwellian as to describe savings accruing to 315 million American taxpayers as “costs”. And you couldn’t possibly be actually trying to redefine costs as money that isn’t being spent, could you?…. Because the word for money that is not being spent is “savings”. “Costs” is what you call money that is being spent. Since the SHUTDOWN is money that is not being paid to the 800,000 workers then the unspent money is what we call savings. I think you incorrectly used the wrong term in naming your clock.

In the otherwise Leviathan-worshiping Time magazine, Nick Gillespie of Reason writes today that the “Shutdown Highlights Basic Fact: Most of Government is ‘Non-Essential.’” But to the MSM, all of government is essential — and there must be more and more of it.

Otherwise, the Statehood as God is Dead.

Related: In sharp contradistinction to USA Today, Patrick Jakeway of the American Thinker explores the dangers of “Hitting the Government’s Credit Card Limit.” But that’s all nonsense of course — Barack Obama just emailed to tell me that The Man has got to be hiding his stash somewhere, right?