There will always be a conflict
between "good" and "good enough."
Henry Martyn Leland
The Gray Lady Looks in the Mirror
Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.
As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects. - Arthur Brisbane, Farewell Column as Public EditorDuring my salad days, I loved the Times. I think it has hurt its own hard-earned credibility with unforced errors (in particular, its February 2008 thinly-vetted McCain/lobbyist affair story). I do think that it is in the best interests of a news publication to provide a comprehensive, reliable, independent perspective and to guard against bias in tone, placement and emphasis; if and when the news source is invested in a story (e.g., be the first or exclusive coverage of some event), journalistic standards must be maintained.
Hearing Times' personnel justify their progressive perspective as reflective of their customers' views strikes me as circular reasoning: McDonald's executives in the past have responded to dietary criticisms of its menu by saying, "We are serving what our customers want." (I did a strategic analysis of McDonald's in my capstone MBA course.) It is true that they are selling food to a lot of customers (and there are likely a number of reasons--convenient, well-maintained locations, consistent menu and product quality, fast service, etc.) But it isn't true that the customers wouldn't prefer other food options.
For example, as a Catholic, during Lent I normally abstain from meat on Fridays; I don't like fried fish sandwiches but I would buy a tuna salad wrap, if available. I remember when I served as a DBA contractor at a San Francisco TV station, there was this one convenience shop that used to roast turkeys one day a week for freshly carved sandwiches--and lines would stretch out the door. (One could adopt a similar concept, say, for carved ham, roast beef, BBQ meats; etc.) I would have preferred a less starchy, healthy breakfast alternative while on business trips.
McDonald's for decades hasn't figured out how to diversify its dinner menu or provide adult entrees beyond finger foods for parents whom didn't want a sandwich or salad; when McDonald's initially acquired Boston Markets (now divested), primarily for its real estate, I honestly thought McDonald's was going to cross-promote and sell a ton of rotisserie chicken take-home family dinner packs through its drive-through windows, maybe some joint restaurant concepts where parents could order comfort food entrees (say, chicken, pot roast, or meat loaf) with sides or frequent self-service soup and salad bars, while the kids had their favorite alternatives. (I would also think back when I was a kid and wonder why you couldn't order hot dogs, BLT's, grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly, etc.) [I can already anticipate the response--it's more difficult to manage a more diversified menu, apply Taylor management techniques, etc.]
What does this have to do with news? If I perceive that a media source is biased, I simply won't rely on it or use it, or I'll have to use multiple sources. I subscribe to a wide variety of news alerts. I will only cite news sources if the media don't hide them behind a paywall. (The Wall Street Journal is particularly bad at this; in fact, they keep most of their editorial content behind a paywall, which is why I've rarely cited the WSJ over the past year or two. In fact, Cafe Hayek or Carpe Diem will occasionally cite an op-ed (say, the author's), and I'll run into the paywall. I will not pay for the privilege of referring readers to the WSJ portal.) The New York Times does have a paywall but it's less heavyhanded for a small number of pageviews.
All things considered, if I get half a dozen news alerts, the one that grabs my attention first is the NYT alert. The Times usually has a more substantive blurb, and I often find the Times' story is better-written and more detailed.
One might then question then: I just wrote that the Times is a great news source; so what do I care about Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, and various other tiresome, repetitive progressive groupthink columnists? The short answer is that I don't. What bothers me about the Times is what I would characterize as its tunnel vision.
During my adult years I've constantly challenged my assumptions: I started off as a pro-life social liberal; I then started questioning tax-and-spend policies and became a conservative. During all the time to date, I had tacitly identified with a proactive foreign policy; and then, over the past 4 years or so, as I was watching incompetent nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan, various other voices started nagging at me (George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, Pat Buchanan, and Ron Paul, among others) about unintended consequences of foreign meddling, intervention and/or expansion.
The fact of the matter is that we have unsustainable federal government growth, and I expect part of the role of a free press is to question and probe the status quo, e.g., the effectiveness of long-term public sector programs, the fitness of someone who has never been an executive in either the private or public sector to administer a government spending nearly a quarter of the country's GDP, the doubling of the publicly-held debt, the ability of a federal government to take on a new entitlement when we already have over $40T in unfunded entitlement liabilities, etc.
I'm not saying necessarily that I expect the Times to serve the role of progressive critic. But this country has been driven by a progressive political agenda for more than century. If you are not questioning the system, you're a part of the system, not independent of it. When will the Times spend as much, if not more time investigating shady government financial statements as it does zestfully pursuing Bernie Madoff or corporations behaving badly? We have alternatives in the free market to bad companies; government uses force to collect revenues. When government behaves badly, all citizens are victims; it's not like we have an alternative government.
Follow-Up Odds and Ends
- Miscellany: 7/14/12. Around the World. This blog is not a fan of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, whose approval has dropped 8 points over the past month to 30% , less than half of her reelection rating of a year ago. Industrial production is down year over year, inflation is soaring, GDP is flat, unemployment is up--and nearly half of the country attributes the economy's stagflation to the government's interventionist policies instead of Fernandez's finger-pointing at the European crisis. (What? Not George W. Bush?) Here's an interesting quote from the cited Reuters' piece:
Annual inflation, clocked by private analysts at over 20 percent, was another worry voiced in the survey. The government fines economists who publish their inflation estimates, which tend to double or triple the official figures.
I mentioned their state-of-denial central bank chief whom promised to take down Milton Friedman's picture. Just a reminder: inflation is a particularly nasty indirect regressive form of taxation affecting the poor and those on fixed-income; the well-to-do can shelter against government money-printing by hedging into, say, gold.Penalty = Tax = Insurance
Ever notice how the knee-jerk response of progressives to the fact that nearly half of workers don't pay federal (income) taxes (technically, there are a number of federal excise and other taxes/fees) is a reminder that workers pay mandatory payroll taxes. Setting aside any relevant income tax withholding, this normally includes federal or state mandatory benefit program contributions, direct (deducted from your wages) or indirect (employer-paid non-wage compensation). I don't really call these contributions "taxes" because functionally equivalent private sector contributions are called "premiums", etc. I prefer to use the term "tax" for a revenue intended to underwrite a government's generally-funded expenses.
There was a reason that the Obama Administration decided to hedge its position to SCOTUS on ObamaCare by asserting the penalty was really a tax. It turns out that FDR used similar reasoning in laying the groundwork for social security:
At tea at his house the year before, [FDR's Secretary of Labor Frances] Perkins has sat beside Justice Harlan Stone, and he gave her a tip. She had confided her fears that any great social insurance system would be rejected by his court. Not so, he said, and whispered back the solution: “The taxing power of the federal government my dear; the taxing power is sufficient for everything you want and need.” If the Social Security Act was formulated as a tax, and not government insurance, it could get through. - Amity Shlaes, "The Forgotten Man" (HT Cafe Hayek)Now as for Chief Justice John "Just Call Me Harlan" Roberts...
Grover Cleveland: A Great Democrat President
His last words: "I have tried so hard to do right."
Does it really bother me that I disagree with a number of historians or political scientists? No. Let me point out that historians are not very good economists; many of them presuppose or correlate federal government expansion with Presidential performance. I happen to like Harding and Coolidge, whom are universally panned, particularly on tax reform and a more streamlined foreign policy. (I do have issues with their advocacy of higher tariffs, monetary policies, other violations of free market policies (e.g., the maternity act and more restrictive immigration policy) and the handling of certain corruption scandals.)
If a President is principled on the concept of federalism, i.e., limited federal government, historians will complain that the vision is too limiting and not worthy of America's role in global leadership. They often don't think in terms of the opportunity costs of federal expansion or fail to consider the possibility that federal policies or activities can be counter-productive.
Grover Cleveland was a unique President in a number of respects: (1) his improbable meteoric rise from mayor to governor to President within a 4-year period; (2) he's the only President to serve non-consecutive terms. Plus, he won more popular votes in the interim (1888) election. In terms of this election, Lawrence Reed (see video below for his talk on whether Cleveland was freedom's President) had this to say about "I'm not Sore Loserman" Cleveland's gracious acceptance of defeat:
Alyn Brodsky, in a biography entitled Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character, records that when reporters asked to what he ascribed his defeat, Cleveland smiled and said, “It was mainly because the other party had the most votes.” He did not equivocate. He did not whine and fret that he won more popular votes than Harrison. The “votes” to which he referred were the ones that really matter under the rules of the Constitution—Electoral College votes.
Cleveland handled his defeat with dignity. No recounts, no lawsuits, no spin, no acrimony. His grace in defeat was all the more remarkable considering that the loss meant he had to relinquish power he already possessed, not merely accept failure to attain it. He would not tolerate his political allies making an issue of the discrepancy between the popular and Electoral tallies. There was nary a hint of a “constitutional crisis” because the Constitution was Cleveland’s “controlling legal authority.”
Presidential Candidate | Vice Presidential Candidate | Political Party | Popular Vote | Electoral Vote | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Benjamin Harrison | Levi Morton | Republican | 5,443,633 | 47.80% | 233 | 58.1% |
 | Grover Cleveland | Allen Thurman | Democratic | 5,538,163 | 48.63% | 168 | 41.9% |
Grover Cleveland was scrupulously honest; when Blaine's campaign uncovered the fact that the unmarried Cleveland was paying child support out of an extramarital affair (the mother named the boy after a married man she had also been seeing at the same time as Cleveland), Cleveland simply told his campaign to tell the truth (i.e., about his child support). He was notoriously frugal with the taxpayer's buck, when he took office as President, he eliminated many positions and refused to fire Republican civil servants for the sake of patronage: he preferred merit-based appointments.
How much do I love Cleveland as President? Let me count the ways:
- in an era of budget surpluses, he fought to lower protectionist tariffs
- he was opposed to American foreign meddling and expansion and reduced existing commitments
- he was vigilant in support of sound money and the gold standard, repeatedly pushing back silverites
- he aggressively vetoed special-interest bills (including phony Civil War pension vote buying) and populist giveaways: only FDR vetoed more bills (over more terms)
- he espoused a commitment to the principles of limited government, most famously in his veto message for the Texas Seed Bill (be still, my heart (my edits): I want to make Barack Hussein Obama write this passage 10,000 times):
I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. The lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Toto, "Africa". What can I say? This has to be Toto's signature hit. A genuine pop masterpiece, memorable arrangement and brilliant, spot-on vocals: one of my all-time favorite hits.
