New York Times

More Bailouts, Urge Left-Leaning Journalists

by Hans Bader on August 23, 2011

in Bailout Watch, Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Legal, Regulation

Left-leaning journalists are urging more mortgage bailouts to try to increase consumer spending, since they erroneously think that inadequate consumer spending is the principal cause of the current bad economy. This is a fallacy: As economist Mark Calabria has noted, consumer spending is currently high as a percentage of the economy compared to most periods in American history, and is low only compared to the unsustainably high levels reached during the housing bubble, when people borrowed rather than saved. It is corporate investment, not consumption, that is too low and needs to rise. Companies, and even Democratic businessmen, are afraid to invest and create new jobs now, because they fear costly, unpredictable new federal regulations and mandates from the Obama administration (such as the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law, and the health care reform law, whose estimated cost just went up by another $50 billion annually and which will reduce the size of America’s work force by hundreds of thousands of people).

Apparently thinking that the government can create money out of thin air through mortgage bailouts, The New York Times‘s editorial board yesterday urged the Obama administration to pressure banks to cut the principal balances of people who imprudently borrowed too much money, even as it admits that such “principal reductions are seen as rewarding reckless borrowers,” since doing so will “free up money for borrowers to use for paying down principal or consumer spending.” But doing that doesn’t create any new wealth, or free up new money, all it does is transfer money from savers to borrowers. Enriching borrowers at investors’ expense results in investors feeling poorer and spending less money, reducing economic activity related to their purchases. The Times just ignores the fact that forcing banks to write off loans will harm bank shareholders, resulting in them spending less money. Thanks to my recent losses in the declining stock market, which will make it harder for me to ever retire, I have already reduced consumer spending, and to save money, I no longer eat out in restaurants.

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Did Spending Cuts Cause the UK Riots?

by Ryan Young on August 15, 2011 · 2 comments

in Economy

Here’s a letter I recently sent to The New York Times:

TO THE EDITOR:

Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen worry in their August 11 op-ed that government spending cuts may be causing the UK riots. They also hint at what that could imply for the U.S.

A problem with their argument is that government spending in the UK has gone up sharply over the last decade. Government spending there is currently about 45 percent of GDP. In 2000, it was only 34 percent. There were no riots then.

A similar story has played out in America. When President Clinton left office, federal spending was 18 percent of GDP. Now it is 24 percent.

If spending cuts cause riots, then we should have nothing to worry about. The fact that we do means something else must be behind the looting.

RYAN YOUNG
Washington, D.C. Aug. 11, 2011
The writer is a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Big Company With Ties to White House Paid No Taxes; GE Also Got Corporate Welfare and Bailout on Special Terms

by Hans Bader on March 27, 2011

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Energy, Environment, Stimulus to Nowhere

“The top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world,” but General Electric, whose CEO was recently tapped to lead President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, pays no taxes at all, reported the New York Times.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.  Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

This negative tax rate is the product of lobbying aimed mostly at liberal lawmakers. “G.E. has spent tens of millions of dollars to push for changes in tax law,” such as “‘green energy’ credits for its wind turbines.” “Since 2002, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States while increasing overseas employment.”

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for even more spending on forms of energy that benefit GE.  Government energy spending and tax credits disproportionately benefit GE, which recently spent  $65.7 million on lobbying to get government subsidies.

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New York Times Repeatedly Makes False Claims About Supreme Court and Court Rulings

by Hans Bader on February 14, 2011 · 1 comment

in Labor, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

In The Atlantic, former ACLU board member Wendy Kaminer discusses the New York Times’ refusal to correct repeated falsehoods in its editorials about the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and its decision to repeat those false claims even after their falsity was pointed out by attorneys and a constitutional law professor. The Times has repeatedly insinuated that the Supreme Court overturned a 1907 federal law banning corporate contributions to political campaigns when it actually did no such thing.

The Citizens United ruling allowed corporations and unions to pay for their own political ads attacking politicians, but it did not allow them to make campaign donations to congressmen, or strike down the Tillman Act, a 1907 law barring such donations. The Times also falsely implied that the Supreme Court had struck down “disclosure requirements“ for campaign donations.

Earlier, law professors wrote at The Volokh Conspiracy about the New York Times’ refusal to print a letter to the editor pointing out a mistake in a recent Times editorial about federal appeals court rulings dealing with business and arbitration of legal disputes. The law professors also argued that the Times persistently misstated whether it is permissible to detain enemy combatants.

I have previously written about the New York Times’ failure to correct repeated falsehoods it printed in its “news” coverage of the Supreme Court’s 2007 Ledbetter v. Goodyear decision, which you can find at this link. Times reporters such as Linda Greenhouse made it sound like the plaintiff in that case, Lilly Ledbetter, had been arbitrarily prevented by the Supreme Court from suing despite only recently learning of the pay discrimination around the time she retired. Actually, as lawyers have repeatedly pointed out, Ledbetter knew by 1992, if not earlier, that she was being paid less than the male employees she claimed should have been paid the same as her. No wonder the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear dismissed her lawsuit as untimely.

As the National Journal’s Stuart Taylor noted, Ledbetter brought her discrimination claim only after the supervisor she accused of discrimination had died, and shortly before she retired, and she knew of the pay disparity she later complained about for at least five years before filing an EEOC complaint. Thus, she was unable to qualify for an extension of the 180-day deadline for suing based on lack of awareness of the pay disparity.

The New York Times editorials repeatedly makes false claims about court rulings to try to depict the Supreme Court as “pro-business.” But it is not in fact pro-business, as I previously explained here.

Indeed, the Supreme Court is more hostile to business than most of the lower federal courts, and is generally hostile to employers in discrimination cases.

The Supreme Court is NOT Pro-Business

by Hans Bader on January 27, 2011

in Economy, Employment, Labor, Legal, Regulation

Once again ruling against America’s employers, the Supreme Court Monday broadened the reach of the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s ban on retaliation. It overturned a federal appeals court ruling against a worker who claimed he suffered unlawful retaliation for complaining about discrimination, when a business allegedly fired his fiancée.

As Ed Whelan notes, the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Thompson v. North American Stainless abrogated “all four” of the federal appeals court rulings on the subject, all of which had ruled in favor of the employer in similar cases. Indeed, the Supreme Court took a more expansive view of workers’ ability to sue businesses than 18 “of the 25 appellate judges to address the issue,” including even “Carter and Clinton appointees” like Judge Diana Murphy, who “decided it in favor of the employer.”

This is part of a long line of rulings against employers by the Supreme Court, which is not pro-business at all, contrary to the false claims of many liberal reporters who cover the Supreme Court. Many of these rulings against employers, like Lewis v. Chicago (2010), have been unanimous reversals of lower court decisions.

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick falsely claimed in 2009 that in the Supreme Court, “big business always prevails, environmentalists are always buried, female and elderly workers go unprotected, death row inmates get the needle, and criminal defendants are shown the door.”

That false claim contradicts reality. Over the last dozen years, the death penalty has been dramatically cut back in cases like Roper v. Simmons (2005), as the Supreme Court has invalidated the death penalty when imposed on the “retarded” (even the mildly retarded) or juveniles (even 16 to 18 year-olds), or when imposed by judges rather than juries (as state laws long provided).

The Supreme Court tossed out thousands of sentences given to criminal defendants through decisions like U.S. v. Booker (2005) and Blakely v. Washington, based not on defendants’ innocence, but rather on the mere fact that judges, rather than juries, had made findings related to their sentences. The supposedly “right-wing” justices Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas joined in these decisions.

Environmentalists have won many cases, including one of the most economically-significant decisions ever — Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) — which arguably opened the door to EPA regulation of virtually every human activity, on the grounds that virtually all activity (from industrial production to farming to cars) emits carbon dioxide. That decision also created a special rule of standing to allow state attorneys general to bring lawsuits that would otherwise be thrown out as meritless for lack of standing.

The Supreme Court allowed businesses to be sued even for products the FDA deems to be safe and effective, in Wyeth v. Levine (2009), in a ruling that legal commentator Ted Frank called the most anti-business decision in 43 years.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly broadened employers’ liability for discrimination against women. It continuously expanded the definition of sexual harassment: it overturned earlier limits on vicarious liability (in Faragher v. Boca Raton (1998)), allowed institutions to be sued based on the acts of non-employees (in Davis v. Monroe County (1999)), and rejected limits on lawsuits where there is no economic or psychological harm (Harris v. Forklift Systems (1993)). All these rulings overturned lower court judgments against plaintiffs. The Supreme Court also made it easier for older workers to sue over unintentional discrimination, even after settling with their employer.

Thus, Dahlia Lithwick’s depiction of the Supreme Court bore no relation to reality. But similarly false depictions are peddled by court reporters at publications like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, fostering a misleading image of the Supreme Court.

Smears and Hypocritical Calls for “Civility” Follow Tucson Shooting

by Hans Bader on January 15, 2011

in Culture, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Even though the Tucson shooter was mentally unbalanced, did not listen to talk radio or Fox News, and liked The Communist Manifesto, several liberal lawmakers, and liberal media like the New York Times, immediately insinuated that his actions resulted from an “atmosphere of hate” or “climate of hate” created by conservatives.

Now, after baselessly accusing conservatives of complicity in murder, they are suddenly calling for “civility.” But this demand has little to do with civility as most Americans would define it. By “incivility” they simply mean disagreement with liberal policies. Liberal newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post recently made this point all too clear by selecting the most divisive and hateful left-wing figures possible to deliver hypocritical lectures about the need for “civility.”

On January 11, the New York Times selected former Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.), who earlier called for the death of Florida Governor Rick Scott, to give Americans a lecture about the need for “civility” and an end to “violent confrontation” in a negative “political climate” (negative for Kanjorski, because the veteran Congressman lost his race for reelection in 2010).  Last October, Kanjorski said of Scott, “they ought to put him against a wall and shoot him.”

On January 13, the Washington Post featured an editorial about the need for more civility, written by demagogue Al Sharpton. What are Sharpton’s credentials for this coveted slot?  He helped incite a race-riot that killed 7 people.  And he was found guilty of libel for falsely accusing a prosecutor of being a rapist — just one of the wildly false allegations Sharpton made in the course of his involvement in an infamous hate-crime hoax, the Tawana Brawley case. Sharpton has never apologized for these calumnies.

In his editorial for the Post, Sharpton hints that the shootings might have been influenced by an ugly “climate in our public discourse.” He decries the “dangers of inflammatory rhetoric” even as he whines that his own heated past rhetoric (such as referring to a “white interloper”) had allegedly been “distorted” by critics. (Sharpton, who has denounced Jews as “diamond merchants,” helped incite the 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart Riot that killed 7 people at a Jewish-run store in Manhattan.)

This crass exercise in self-promotion earned him kudos from the Post’s Jonathan Capehart, who ludicrously admonishes Sarah Palin to follow the example of Sharpton, who Capehart reveres as if he were a wise elder statesman. Civility, it seems, is trumped by racial solidarity and ideology at the Post.

What “civility” really means at the Post is fleshed out in the columns accompanying Sharpton’s, like the editorial written by E.J. Dionne, who perennially attacks Republicans for alleged incivility, and earlier approvingly cited the President’s “call to civility.” Dionne insinuates that opponents of gun control are collectively guilty of subversion, nativism, and birtherism, writing that “The descriptions of President Obama as a ‘tyrant,’ the intimations that he is ‘alien’ and the suggestions that his presidency is illegitimate are essential to the core rationale for resisting any restrictions on firearms.” (There is little basis for this claim.)  To Dionne, incivility is synonymous with a conservative position on guns – and “even responsible conservatives” must accept some responsibility for curbing such “violent” views.

What enforcing civility means to the New York Times is made equally clear: adhering to liberal views, and holding conservatives collectively liable for the Arizona shootings.  Praising the President’s call for civility, the Times once again blames those “whose partisanship has been excessive and whose words have sown the most division and dread. This page and many others have identified those voices and called on them to stop demonizing their political opponents.”  The identification it is referring to was its Monday editorial, in which the Times insinuated that Republicans, Tea Party members, and conservative media had caused the shootings, although not “directly.”

The Times claimed that the shooter was “ very much a part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance that has . . . infected the political mainstream with violent imagery,“ and that “it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger” that has set the “nation on edge” by “demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is . . . the enemy of the people.”  (Never mind that America’s political climate is mild and bland by historical and international standards.  Or that assassinations were more common back when liberal networks had greater market share.)

That the recent calls for civility are about ideological gain, not avoiding violent rhetoric, is illustrated by recent articles in publications like Slate.  There, Jacob Weisberg once again smears conservatives and libertarians by claiming that the Tea Party and conservative populism “made the Giffords shooting more likely,” by questioning government authority in areas such as Obamacare: “At the core of the far right’s culpability is its” support for “ the dangerous idea that the federal government lacks valid authority” in areas like “health care reform.” “It is this, rather than violent rhetoric per se, that is the most dangerous aspect of right-wing extremism.”

Never mind that the government’s legitimacy is based on, and enhanced by, its willingness to respect constitutional limits, which include limits on federal power – something recognized by the highly-respected judge slain in Tucson, John Roll, whose most famous ruling struck down portions of  a federal law, the Brady Act, as a violation of the Tenth Amendment.

Never mind that critics of the law’s constitutionality include well-respected people like James Blumstein, a professor of constitutional and health care law who was a key adviser to Tennessee’s outgoing moderate Democratic governor.

Weisberg’s smear is echoed more politely in a newspaper op-ed arguing that “the real problem with today’s political discourse” is “not the language of violence,” but “the notion  . . that an incremental change in the way health care is delivered” through Obamacare “is a plot to deprive Americans of their freedom.”  (The op-ed admits the obvious: that the map on Palin’s web site with a gun sight was just a harmless metaphor, not violent rhetoric that would incite anyone to commit a crime.) Never mind that a respected federal judge struck down Obamacare’s individual mandate as unconstitutional, or the fact that Obamacare violates individual freedoms in several ways, such as containing racial preferences that were criticized by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

It’s not surprising that liberal commentators would seek to redefine civility in terms of ideology, rather than violent language or metaphors.  It’s not as if conservatives have a monopoly on violent metaphors.  As the president himself has said:

“They Bring a Knife…We Bring a Gun”
A GOP victory would mean “hand to hand combat”
“Get in Their Faces!”
“I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I’m angry!”
“Hit Back Twice As Hard”
“We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick.“
“It’s time to Fight for it.”
“Punish your enemies”
“I’m itching for a fight.”

And violent imagery is hardly unknown among hardcore liberals.  Plenty of examples can be found at the Climate of Hate Blog.  Here are some additional examples:

“Save mother Earth Kill Bush”
“Prepare for war”
“I hope Glenn Beck kills himself”
“Bush is the disease Death is the cure”
“I’m here to kill Bush”
“Abort Sarah Palin”
“Sniper wanted”
“Bush is the only dope worth shooting”
“Death to extremist Christian Terrorist pig Bush”
“Death to world #1 terrorist pig Bush & his sheep”
“Smite Bush for he is an abomination upon the Earth”
“Lee Harvey, where are you?”

The War on Terror, the TSA, and Useful Partisans

by Ryan Young on November 30, 2010 · 1 comment

in Politics as Usual

Partisans are strange creatures. They can support a policy for years when their guys are in charge, then oppose it in the blink of an eye when the other team takes power. Ross Douthat takes a thoughtful look inside the partisan mind in yesterday’s New York Times:

[M]illions of liberals can live with indefinite detention for accused terrorists and intimate body scans for everyone else, so long as a Democrat is overseeing them. And millions of conservatives find wartime security measures vastly more frightening when they’re pushed by Janet “Big Sis” Napolitano (as the Drudge Report calls her) rather than a Republican like Tom Ridge.

He also identifies a bright side to partisanship that I hadn’t thought of:

But for the country as a whole, partisanship does have one modest virtue. It guarantees that even when there’s an elite consensus behind whatever the ruling party wants to do (whether it’s invading Iraq or passing Obamacare), there will always be a reasonably passionate opposition as well. Given how much authority is concentrated in Washington, especially in the executive branch, even a hypocritical and inconsistent opposition is better than no opposition at all.

Good point.

Image credit: turtlemom4bacon’s flickr photostream.

A New Course for Wild Tigers

by Brian McGraw on November 24, 2010 · 1 comment

in Environment, Private Conservation, Regulation, Trade

A New York Times editorial highlights a struggle faced by the wild tiger, noting its population is down to approximately 3,200 from a high of over 100,000 just one century ago. Tigers face a number of challenges: their wild populations occupy a dwindling amount of space — putting pressure on their habitats, and a variety of tiger parts are highly valued, specifically by the Chinese.

Read the Times quote:

Ending the international trade in tiger parts, which are still believed to have almost magical powers in China and across Asia, will be harder to solve. This isn’t a matter of stopping a few poachers. It means shutting down hard-core traffickers and a high-profit black market. Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, is scheduled to attend on Wednesday, the final day of the meeting, which we hope is a good sign. China banned trading in tiger parts in 1993. It must actively discourage the cultural appetite for them and aggressively pursue traffickers.

You can almost hear the condescension jump off the page. Those silly Chinese and their primitive beliefs about medicine, and their revolting food and drink preferences. If only their government were able to make them more civilized, like us.

Imagine this paragraph is about the trade in drugs rather than tiger parts. Many sensible liberals understand the failure of the war on drugs — the inability of a government to stop market forces from meeting the wants and needs of individuals, the billions of dollars and lives wasted, the futility (and arrogance) of efforts to change a “cultural appetite.” Why are they unable to see that the trade in tigers is no different? I am confident that these same individuals support trade in cows, chickens, pigs, etc. all of which are killed in the same way.

The current wild tiger population is found in a variety of scattered countries throughout the world. One thing that many of them have in common is that villages located near tiger populations (forests) are often still living in poverty. Furthermore, without adequate protections against the tiger, these villages are threatened as tigers are capable of attacking and killing humans. When poachers arrive to kill tiger’s, villagers are more than happy to trade their localized knowledge of the area (to help poaching) in exchange for money and the removal of the tiger — a threat to their lives. Poachers are able to pay significant fees to these villagers for their assistance as one individual tiger can fetch as much as $50,000 on the black market.

The solution? In my opinion, more of the same will not work. Poachers will continue to be allured by large profits and conservation efforts will not succeed.

Allow tigers to be traded internationally. There is some worry that the Chinese truly prefer “wild tigers” rather than one which would be raised by humans, though I cannot imagine that their would be much hesitation when the price of tigers drops precipitously due to market forces. The incentive to poach tigers will disappear, and breeders of tigers will ensure there is an adequate number of tigers remaining to assist with re-breeding efforts if that becomes necessary.

Image credit: wallyg’s flickr photostream.

TSA Regulations Likely Increase Travel Deaths

by Brian McGraw on November 19, 2010 · 2 comments

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

As air travel becomes increasingly expensive or more inconvenient, travelers on the margin will choose driving rather than flying. For example, the TSA began requiring that checked baggage be screened in 2002. As a result (increased lines, etc.) total air travel dropped by about 6 percent. There is good reason to believe that the recent deployment of body-image scanning/pat-downs will have a similar effect.

The problem is that per mile traveled, driving is much more dangerous than flying. The researches estimate that in the 4th quarter of 2002, there were approximately 129 automobile deaths attributable to the switch from air travel to driving. Annually that would equal about 515 people.  This is a non-significant number of individuals.

Do these new security features save enough lives to justify the real effects of American citizens deciding to drive rather than fly? I’d guess that there are numerous other ways where sufficiently similar levels of security could be achieved without hassling customers and encouraging them to skip air travel.

This is yet another troubling example of government safety regulations. The TSA was established to protect air travel. Yet if the only true result of their existence is to shift risk from the air to our roads, they haven’t actually made our lives any safer — while attacking our privacy and costing about $7 billion annually.

Via Nate Silver at The New York Times.

Photo credit: jello2594’s flickr photostream.

China Mocks U.S. Over Subsidy Investigation

by Brian McGraw on October 18, 2010

in International, Trade

An update to Friday’s post:

Bloomberg (and the The New York Times) reported this weekend on China’s response to U.S. accusations over Chinese green energy subsidies. Zhang Guobao, a top energy official in China, directed a number of blunt comments towards the Obama administration:

Should the Americans pursue the subsidy issue with the World Trade Organization, Mr. Zhang said, “the only ones who will be humiliated are themselves.”

“What America is blaming us for is exactly what they do themselves,” Mr. Zhang said. “Chinese subsidies to new energy companies are much smaller than those of the U.S. government. If the U.S. government can subsidize companies, then why can’t we?”

Mr. Zhang accused American trade officials of repeatedly delaying talks over the same issues that the White House now wanted to investigate and suggested the administration was playing election season politics.

Mr. Zhang called the Steelworkers’ complaint unfounded, saying the Obama administration had proposed subsidies totaling $60 billion for clean energy industries, adding that the American government had placed domestic-content provisions — so-called Buy American clauses — on certain clean energy products.

“I have been thinking: What do the Americans want?” said Mr. Zhang, the vice chairman of the government’s National Development and Reform Commission. “Do they want fair trade? Or an earnest dialogue? Or transparent information? I don’t think they want any of this. I think more likely, the Americans just want votes.”

He makes a number of very obvious points: this case is likely without merit as the U.S. heavily subsidizes our domestic green energy industry, and that the Obama administration is misdirecting U.S. anger over the economy towards China.

The New York Times also published this weekend a China bashing op-ed by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). Senator Brown, no stranger to criticizing U.S. trade policy, has written a book — Myths of Free Trade — covering it. Departing from the almost universal consensus of economists across the political spectrum, Brown argues that no one outside of rich investors benefit from what he calls “unregulated trade” and that  free trade has led to global economic stagnation. Despite what the Times might tell you, denying reality is a time-honored tradition shared by politicians across the political spectrum.

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