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Times Watch for
October 15, 2004
No Sympathy For the Cheneys
David Stout files a story Friday on the controversy over John Kerry's unprompted mention of Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter during the final presidential debate: "Senator John Kerry's reference in the debate Wednesday night to Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter touched off a political tempest on Thursday, with Mr. Cheney accusing Mr. Kerry of a cynical political attack and Mr. Kerry dismissing the charge. Conservative Christians and gay rights groups also weighed in on the way Mr. Kerry brought up Mr. Cheney's daughter Mary in response to a question about whether homosexuality is a matter of choice. 'I think it is part of a strategy to suppress traditional-values voters, to knock 1 or 2 percent off in some rural areas by causing people to turn on the president," said Gary Bauer, a conservative Christian who ran for president four years ago."
Stout comes off as unsympathetic to the Cheney family and tries hard to make gay marriage a wedge issue between Cheney and Bush: "Democrats countered that the White House was trying to make people forget the debate, which they said Mr. Kerry had won. Moreover, the Democrats said, Mr. Cheney and his wife have both mentioned that their daughter Mary is gay and have talked about her with love and pride. Ms. Cheney is an official in her father's campaign. In fact, on Aug. 24, as Republicans were drafting their party platform and calling for a constitutional amendment that 'fully protects' the institution of marriage between man and woman, Mr. Cheney expressed his affection for his daughter at a rally in Davenport, Iowa, telling a forum that people should be free to enter 'into any kind of relationship they want to.' That statement seemed to put Mr. Cheney at odds with President Bush, who supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Gay rights advocates accused the Bush administration at the time of trying to keep its conservative Christian base through Mr. Bush's stance, while broadening the Republican base by Mr. Cheney's seeming moderation on an emotional issue."
For the rest of Stout on the Cheney controversy, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Dick Cheney | Mary Cheney | Debates | Gay Rights | Sen. John Kerry | David Stout
Fact-Checking Bush's Tax Cuts from a Liberal Angle
Friday's economic fact-check by David Rosenbaum, "Are Americans Better Off Economically Under Bush? It Depends on How You Look at It," purports to hit both Kerry and Bush for misleading statements, but as usual when it comes to Times' fact-checking, Bush fares the worst: "Mr. Bush accused his challenger of 'a litany of misstatements' and held that voters were in better financial shape because of his tax cuts. But, as with the Kerry data, the accuracy of the president's statements is not obvious. The truth seems to be that, on average, Americans may have more money at their disposal. But more people are worse off than are better off. The trick is in the word 'average.' Average income -- all the income in the country divided by the total number of people -- has gone up because of the large increase in after-tax income enjoyed by the very wealthy. But median income -- the point at which half the people have more and half less -- has dropped."
Rosenbaum again takes on Bush's tax cuts: "In the debate, Mr. Bush kept returning to his argument that ordinary people were better off because of the tax cuts. At one point, he declared: 'You've got more money in your pocket as a result of the tax relief we passed and he opposed. If you have a child, you got a $1,000 child credit. That's money in your pocket. If you're married, we reduced the marriage penalty. The code ought to encourage marriage, not discourage marriage. We created a 10 percent bracket to help lower-income Americans. A family of four making $40,000 received about $1,700 in tax relief.' Mr. Bush's data is accurate. A couple with two children would have a tax saving this large. But his tax cuts were sharply skewed toward the wealthiest Americans, contrary to his statement in the debate that 'most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans.' The wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers, those with incomes above $112,000, received half of all the tax savings, and their average tax reduction this year because of the laws enacted under Mr. Bush has been about $7,250."
Rosenbaum is repeating the liberal spin from his Thursday post-debate fact-check, measuring the "fairness" of tax cuts by using gross dollar figures rather than as a percentage reduction of the tax burden. That would seem far more important to the average family than the class-war point about exactly how many gross dollars "the wealthiest Americans" are saving as well. Since those "wealthiest Americans" pay far more actual dollars in taxes in the first place, any percentage cut in their tax rate will disproportionately return more dollars to them.
As Times Watch has noted before, a Tax Foundation study shows Bush's tax cuts "Erase a Larger Share of [the] Income Tax Burden for Middle-Income Families." The authors points out that under the Bush plan, taxes on the adjusted gross income of a hypothetical family of four earning $40,000 fell 96% as a percentage of their total tax liability. The similar figure for a family making $100,000 a year fell "only" 21%, showing that Bush's tax cut can actually be portrayed as progressive.
For the rest of Rosenbaum's economic fact-check, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Debates | David Rosenbaum | Taxes
The Pro-Kerry Truth Squad Rides Again
Elisabeth Bumiller and David Halbfinger's Friday campaign story, "Bush and Kerry, Feeling Like Winners, Go to Las Vegas," features another effort by Bumiller to
defend Kerry from a Bush criticism: "The president, in a favorite refrain, accused Mr. Kerry of arguing that America should seek approval from other nations through a 'global test' before acting in its own defense. 'Once again last night, with a straight face, the senator, shall we say, refined his answer on the proposed global test he would administer before acting to defend America,' Mr. Bush said. 'After trying to say it wasn't really a test at all, last night he once again defended his approach, saying 'I think it makes sense.' The senator now says we have to pass some international-truth standard -- those are his words. The truth is, we should never turn over America's national security decisions to international bodies.'"
The Times won't let that stand: "Mr. Kerry's actual words in the debate in Tempe were these: 'I have never suggested a test where we turn over our security to any nation. In fact, I've said the opposite. I will never turn the security of the United States over to any nation. No nation will ever have a veto over us. But I think it makes sense, I think most Americans in their guts know that we ought to pass a sort of truth standard. That's how you gain legitimacy with your own countrypeople, and that's how you gain legitimacy in the world.'"
Kerry must feel fortunate the Times is so willing to make his case so he doesn't always have to.
For Bumiller's latest defense of Kerry, click here.
• Elisabeth Bumiller | George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Debates | David Halbfinger | Sen. John Kerry
The
Times Lashes Out at Sinclair Broadcasting
The Times weighs in with an editorial Friday on the controversy over the Sinclair Broadcasting Group airing the anti-Kerry documentary "Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal" on stations it owns and operates.
The Times blithely declares "false" an argument that would seem to require deeper examination: "It claims, falsely, that his antiwar statements inspired the North Vietnamese to step up the torture of American prisoners, and it is filled with other distortions about the war in Vietnam."
Predictably, the Times repeats its unsubstantiated claim that Bush goes around accusing war opponents of lacking patriotism: "The movie that caught Sinclair's eye, a 45-minute diatribe called 'Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,' rehashes Republican charges that are familiar to everyone from the latest round of ads attacking Mr. Kerry's antiwar activities: primarily that he lied to the Senate in 1971 about atrocities in Vietnam and that his testimony and the antiwar movement in general aided the North Vietnamese and harmed American soldiers. This line of reasoning neatly dovetails with the Bush campaign's assertions that criticizing Mr. Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq is unpatriotic and harms American soldiers."
Hyperbolic hand-wringing ("Sinclair is in dangerous territory") aside, Sinclair is hardly a massive "threat." As the MRC's Brent Baker explains: "Despite the efforts of the ABC and CBS reporters to play up the power of Sinclair, its stations have a fraction of the audience of the ABC or CBS networks which reach every home and so a minute or two on CBS or ABC has more impact than a lengthier segment on stations 76 percent of Americans can't watch and most in the remaining 24 percent do not."
For the full editorial, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Editorial | Sen. John Kerry | Sinclair Broadcasting Group | Vietnam
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org