| About | |
| Contact Us | |
| Articles | |
| Topic Index | |
| Reports | |
| Quotes | |
| On the Web | |
| Links | |
| TW Tracker | |
| Support | |
Times Watch for
April 13, 2004
The Adams' Family Bias
Adam Nagourney covers Bush's decision to hold a prime-time news conference in "Bush News Conference Set Amid Campaign Concerns." As the headline to his Tuesday story suggests, Nagourney paints the president as on the defensive: "Mr. Bush's decision to face the press after a week in which he has largely kept out of view while vacationing in Texas is a sign of what some Republicans described as an increasingly jittery White House. Officials say they are concerned that events beyond their control, from the battlefields of Iraq to a hearing room in Washington, threaten a carefully planned re-election campaign."
Later Nagourney quotes another Adam, former Times reporter Adam Clymer, as insisting that events in Iraq and D.C. are hurting Bush: "'I would be surprised if television coverage of American servicemen getting shot or killed in Iraq, or of people questioning what the Bush campaign did in response to 9/11, is good for the president's re-election,' said Adam Clymer, a former political reporter for The New York Times who is the political director for the National Annenberg Election Survey, which has conducted daily surveys of voters throughout the year."
Of course, given Clymer's past "major league" run-ins with Bush, he may not be well-disposed to Bush, even excluding his political liberalism.
For the rest of Nagourney, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Adam Clymer | Adam Nagourney | Terrorism
Louis Uchitelle: "Time For Another New Deal"
Sunday's Economic View column by economics reporter Louis Uchitelle is accurately titled, "Maybe It's Time For Another New Deal." Uchitelle quotes liberally (and that's the right word) from Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Uchitelle opens: "Can the private sector generate enough jobs to return the United States to full employment? Or must government play a much greater supporting role in job creation? That question, once hotly debated, is barely mentioned today. It should be. For 30 years, the assumption has been that the private sector would generate full employment on its own. It has not, except for a five-year stretch in the late 1990's. Now the situation has become worse. Despite robust economic growth, the private sector is generating fewer jobs than ever in a recovery."
Uchitelle writes: "The situation cries out for government job creation, Mr. Frank said in an interview last week. But public pressure is lacking. 'People have so attacked government,' he said, 'that now when there is a need for it to help create jobs, they cannot recognize a positive role for government.' Such views are rare today. They are often dismissed as heresy."
Again, Uchitelle ignores Kerry's voting record and insists the senator from Massachusetts is a centrist and that few liberals inhabit Congress these days: "Among politicians they show up, when they show up at all, in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Mr. Frank is a member of that dwindling wing. John Kerry, the presidential candidate, is not. He is a centrist, in the Clinton mode. He counts on the private sector to generate full employment, with government playing a peripheral role, mainly in tax incentives that encourage companies to create more jobs….Years of layoffs, wage stagnation, outsourcing and now offshore contracting have made people skeptical. Mr. Frank plays to that skepticism. So do a few others, the most important being Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Democratic leader who in recent speeches appears to be trying to push his party back toward New Deal policies. The government job creation in his proposals would be coupled with much-needed public spending."
Uchitelle ends his piece with a Ted Kennedy quote: "Every billion dollars invested in highway construction produces 47,500 jobs. We must create new and meaningful jobs for all Americans. And we must do this by recognizing once again that government--an enlightened government--has an extraordinary responsibility to assist in this task.''
For the rest of Uchitelle's "New Deal," click here.
• Economics | Labeling Bias | Sen. Ted Kennedy | Sen. John Kerry | Louis Uchitelle
Libertarian Take Over at the
NYT?
Bizarro world at the Times? The Sunday Magazine story "What the World Needs Now Is DDT," from editorial writer Tina Rosenberg, is a surprise from its in-your-face headline to text critical of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," the bible of the modern environmental movement.
Upon rereading Carson's tome, Rosenberg notes: "But this time around, I was also struck by something that did not occur to me when I first read the book in the early 1980's. In her 297 pages, Rachel Carson never mentioned the fact that by the time she was writing, DDT was responsible for saving tens of millions of lives, perhaps hundreds of millions….DDT killed bald eagles because of its persistence in the environment. 'Silent Spring' is now killing African children because of its persistence in the public mind. Public opinion is so firm on DDT that even officials who know it can be employed safely dare not recommend its use."
After noting the hysteria the word "DDT" inspires among ill-informed environmentalists, she notes how such closed attitudes can have deadly results: "Even in Africa, malaria gets nowhere near the attention of AIDS. It has always been around, and it kills not middle-class adults but rural 4-year-olds, who don't have much of a lobby."
For the rest of Rosenberg's essay on DDT and malaria, click here.
• DDT | Environment | Malaria | Tina Rosenberg
Taking Another Quack at Scalia
A Monday editorial half-heartedly praises conservative Justice Scalia on one issue while dredging up another: "Justice Antonin Scalia has done the right thing and apologized to two reporters who recorded one of his speeches but were required to erase their recordings by an overzealous federal marshal."
But that conciliatory first sentence was followed by this out-of-nowhere hit: "It was gratifying to see Justice Scalia show a measure of humility that was sorely lacking a few weeks ago from his angry refusal to withdraw from a case involving his duck-hunting buddy, Vice President Dick Cheney."
For the rest of the editorial on Scalia, click here.
• Dick Cheney | Editorial | Antonin Scalia | Supreme Court
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org