A TRULY AMAZING EVENT! On July 14, the Washington Post reported some facts about the debt limit crisis
THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2011
Kristof brings in the snide/The news page eschews basic facts: This morning, Nicholas Kristof flies away to a lazy man’s retreat. Discussing the ongoing debt limit crisis, he turns to the snark and the snide.
His wonderful paper, the New York Times, continues to avoid reporting the most basic facts about this complex matter (see below). But great men like Kristof don’t stoop to explain. This morning, he brings in the snide:
KRISTOF (7/21/11): The first few times I heard House Republicans talk about our budget mess, I worried that they had plunged off the deep end. But as I kept on listening, a buzzer went off in my mind, and I came to understand how much sense the Tea Party caucus makes.
Why would we impose “job-crushing taxes” on wealthy Americans just to pay for luxuries like federal prisons? Why end the “carried interest” tax loophole for financiers, just to pay for unemployment benefits—especially when those same selfless tycoons are buying yachts and thus creating jobs for all the rest of us?
Hmmm. The truth is that House Republicans don’t actually go far enough. They should follow the logic of their more visionary members with steps like these:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! As he continues, Kristof shares his wonderful sense of humor, amusing those who already think they understand this rolling mess. But what if readers don’t understand? Great men like Kristof don’t stoop to explain. But then, neither does the Times as a whole. It’s instructive to review our greatest newspaper’s overall effort this morning.
Consider the rest of the op-ed page:
Frank Bruni writes his second column (out of seven total) about same-sex marriage. It’s a perfectly valid topic, of course, and Bruni has been widely described as the Times’ “first openly gay columnist.” But the rest of Bruni’s work has been vapid, seeming to extend an extremely strange op-ed page prescription at the Times: Women and gays are basically there to be silly, this strange rule seems to proclaim. Adding to the oddness of today’s op-ed layout, Bruni’s piece lies next to this column, in which Jonathan Turley argues in favor of legalizing polygamy.
The fourth column on today’s op-ed page deals with the space shuttle program. It’s great to see there are no pressing, disaster-level problems staring us all in the face.
That said, is there some problem out in the country concerning this whole “debt limit” matter? Kristof uses the topic today to bring in the snark and the snide. No one else tries to clarify sh*t—but then, almost no one ever does at this, our greatest newspaper.
(People! Krugman explains something twice a week! How much clarity could a great nation need?)
That’s life on the Times op-ed page today. Consider the Times news and editorial pages, where a common role reversal occurs once again today.
To what role reversal do we refer? By normal standards, you review a paper’s news pages to gain access to basic facts. You turn to its editorial page to savor the board’s opinions. But as we have often noted, you’re often more likely to find basic facts on the Times editorial page! This paper’s news pages eschew basic facts. More often, the editors print them.
This morning, the editors opine on the ongoing “debt talks.” More specifically, they discuss the Gang of Six budget plan in a long editorial. And sure enough! The editors include some basic facts about this high-profile new plan—many more facts than have appeared in the Times’ news pages!
Go ahead—search through this paper’s news pages. For the second straight day, you will find virtually no facts about the Gang of Six plan. If you want to review a few meager facts, you have to turn to the editorial. At that location, you will find yourself exposed to some facts, even as the editors do their usual miserable job sifting through them. In this passage, the editors fumble their way through the plan’s apparent or alleged tax provisions:
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (7/21/11): The Gang of Six plan calls for at least $1 trillion in new tax revenues by eliminating and reducing tax breaks and deductions. For conservative senators like Saxby Chambliss, Lamar Alexander, Michael Crapo and Tom Coburn to accept this reality shows how willfully blind the House majority has really become.
The senators’ willingness to compromise is commendable, but the agreement they have assembled is really more a collection of talking points than a budget plan, and contains some highly dubious provisions.
The tax sections are slippery, and their size depends on whether the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are finally allowed to expire.
It proposes to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which was designed to collect income from the wealthy that had been sheltered in deductions and loopholes. This tax should be changed. Because it has never been adjusted to current economic reality, it has come to ensnare the incomes of Americans who are much farther down the wealth ladder, while failing to capture many of the superrich. Fairness and sound policy would also dictate eliminating tax breaks for the very rich, like the preferential rate for capital gains. But the gang’s plan says nothing specific about that.
Does the Gang of Six plan “propose to eliminate the alternative minimum tax?” Not if you’re reading the Times news pages, which haven’t yet gone into this meager amount of detail. In fact, an array of complex claims are in the air concerning the role the AMT plays in the Gang of Six plan. But if you read the Times news pages, you don’t yet know that the AMT is part of this plan at all.
Perhaps it’s just as well, given the confusing way the editors sift this topic.
Question: Did the editors say the AMT should be eliminated? Or did they say it should simply be “changed” in some way? As is so often case at this paper, there’s really no way to be sure. Meanwhile, the editors’ account of the AMT strikes us as rather confusing (which isn’t to say that it’s “wrong”). For example: The AMT “has never been adjusted to current economic reality?” In fact, the AMT is adjusted pretty much every year, as part of the annual (or semi-annual) “AMT fix” newspapers routinely discuss. (This annual or semi-annual “fix” is specifically designed to stop the AMT from “ensnaring the incomes of Americans who are much farther down the wealth ladder.”) More puzzlement: The editors seem to criticize the AMT because it “fails to capture many of the superrich.” But the AMT was never designed to “capture” all the highest earners. As originally intended, it was supposed to impose a minimum tax on those who have so many deductions that they end up owing no taxes at all, or at most a very small sum.
On balance, we find the editors’ discussion of the AMT rather confusing. But as is so often the case at the Times, this editorial contains more facts about the hot new budget plan than two days’ worth of Times news reporting. On the op-ed page, meanwhile, it’s the standard “what them worry” about onrushing disaster.
Should polygamy be legal? That’s a legitimate question too—although Fox is going to smash the Times for putting the Bruni and Turley columns side-by-side today. (It proves what Mr. O always said! From the one, we go straight to the other!) But is it possible that this question could be resolved after the August 2 potential disaster? In the meantime, could someone possibly help readers understand basic facts about an onrushing crisis?
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