More Misleading on Greenspan's "Tax Increase" Talk
 

     The Times again misleads about Alan Greenspan's recent House testimony in its lead editorial for Friday, "Greenspan Talks Tax Increases." (Short version: He didn't.)

     "It's a sad thing, really, that it has taken this long for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to finally suggest that Congress consider tax increases to close the nation's gargantuan budget deficit. That should be a no-brainer, especially since the deficit -- now at $412 billion -- is largely due to tax cuts that President Bush and Congress have lavished on the most affluent over the past four years. The recognition of the obvious by the Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, followed much waffling and was accompanied by oracular talk of spending cuts and his familiar act of fealty to Mr. Bush: a vague endorsement of private accounts in Social Security. In the end, all the huffing and puffing is testament to the strength of the anti-tax fixation of the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress, which has produced reckless tax cuts during wartime and a weak dollar in place of budgetary discipline. But as Mr. Greenspan has now made clear, the profligacy must end. 'Unless we do something to ameliorate' rising debt levels, he told the House Budget Committee on Wednesday, 'we will be in a state of stagnation.'"

     But as Times Watch pointed out yesterday when rebutting Edmund Andrews' similarly misleading lead story on Greenspan's testimony, the chairman actually emphasized cutting entitlement spending, not raising taxes. Greenspan mentioned taxes six times, each time within a context of scrutinizing "both spending and taxes." By contrast, he mentioned the need to reduce entitlement spending 17 times.

     More Greenspan-related gripes: Andrews' Friday front-page story on Greenspan's backing of a consumption tax waits until the 20th paragraph to mention a harsh attack on Greenspan by Democratic Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid: "Some Democrats are also furious with Mr. Greenspan, who they say contributed to the record budget deficits incurred under President Bush by condoning the tax cuts he pushed. 'I'm not a big Greenspan fan,' said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate Democratic leader, in an interview with CNN on Thursday. 'I think he's one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington.'"

     By contrast, the Washington Post knows a political controversy when it sees one. Post reporter Dan Balz gets a full story out of what he calls Sen. Reid's "personal  attack" on the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

For the full editorial, click here:

Burying Bush's Social Security Reform
 

     Robin Toner delivers yet another premature eulogy for Bush's Social Security plan in her Friday piece, "Bush Denies That Private Accounts Are in Serious Trouble."

     Toner hammers the headline's "serious trouble" point home by using the phrase twice in her story: "President Bush dismissed the notion Thursday that his campaign to create private accounts in Social Security was in serious trouble, asserting he was still 'at the early stages of the process.'….It was a day of mixed signals and scrambling. Republican leaders tried to steady their drive for Social Security legislation, despite a round of downbeat polls and a rocky reception during last week's Congressional recess. Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, took the floor of the Senate to say that, in contrast to his comments Tuesday, he was committed to bringing Social Security legislation to the floor this year. On Tuesday, asked if he could guarantee such a vote, Dr. Frist said it was 'just too early' to say 'whether it will be a week, a month, six months or a year.' His remark was widely taken as a sign that the legislation was in serious trouble, and not welcomed by the Bush administration, which hopes for action before Congress heads into the midterm election year of 2006."

For the full Toner, click here:

Ultrasound Imagery = "Operation Rescue Propaganda"
 

     Virginia Heffernan reviews the National Geographic Channel special "In the Womb" for Friday's Arts section. She actually likes the show, which uses computerized ultrasound images to track the birth of a baby girl from conception to delivery. But her first two paragraphs manage to be both muddled and tasteless: "Full-frontal images of a vagina are available on cable Sunday night, but they come at a price. You have to watch a bloody, hairy baby burst through that vagina, and before that you have to watch the little creature in utero, growing in all its Operation Rescue propaganda detail, in the National Geographic Channel's latest unveiling of the hideous miracle of life."

     Since when did science (the movie is composed of 4-D ultrasound images) become "Operation Rescue propaganda"?

     The next paragraph is almost too muddled to interpret -- but are killers of abortion doctors truly comparable to distributors of the pro-life movie "The Silent Scream."

     Heffernan writes: "'In the Womb' is actually a cool, beautiful movie, a celebration of computer imaging and the 4-D ultrasound. It exhibits a minimum of politics, probably because it appears to have been made in England, where the acknowledgement that humans in the womb are complex, dreaming, pain-experiencing, memory-having, walk-practicing, music-enjoying entities does not instantly put you in the same camp as doctor assassins and purveyors of 'The Silent Scream.'"

For the full Heffernan review, click here:

Thank God for That
 

     "Elsewhere in the Bay Area, advocates of gender-neutral bathrooms are beginning to make themselves heard." -- Reporter Patricia  Leigh Brown discussing "a new political frontier."