Times Watch for September 30, 2003
Bush Fiction
In his Sunday Arts & Leisure column, associate editor
Frank Rich bemoans the conflation of news and entertainment, homing in on K
Street, the new HBO prime-time series on political life in the nations
capital. In a long aside, Rich goes after (naturally) the fictions of the Bush
administration. Rich writes that the Sunday talk show Meet the Press may have
offered more fiction per minute than any news show in memory. When interviewed
by Tim Russert, Vice President Cheney asserted that Iraq was the heart of the
base for the 9/11 terrorists and went on from there with a series of
half-truths and outright deceptions about almost every topic broached, including
his supposed lack of current financial interest in Halliburton..As low as the
administration's credibility may be, it is still trusted more than the media
trying to correct the fictions the White House plants in the national
consciousness.
For the rest of Frank Richs piece on White House fictions,
click here.
Firestones
Tiresome Litany on Iraq Rebuilding
David Firestones G.O.P. Senators Say Money for
Iraq Must Be Grant, Not Loan includes this slanted take-out line: Is that $87
billion an urgent need or an unseemly rush job?
Firestones Tuesday story
repeats his
tiresome litany
that Bush aims to rebuild Iraq while ignoring U.S. infrastructure (as if
Manhattan was in the same primitive state as Mosul): Many Republicans and
Democrats in both houses are uncomfortable with the idea of giving Iraq the
$20.3 billion in taxpayer money for its public works projects, at a time when
similar spending at home is being squeezed by a record-setting deficit.
For the rest of David Firestones story on the $87
billion Iraq bill,
click here.
Missing
the Minimum Wage
A Money & Business analysis by Louis Uchitelle on
Sunday concerns local government attempts to raise the minimum wage. Uchitelle
clearly misses minimum wage hikes: Remember the minimum wage? It used to go up
regularly, but that stopped happening 20 years ago. We are now in the seventh
year of the latest drought, and increasingly the states and lately a few cities
are constructing their own ad hoc network of minimum wages.
The only criticism of a
minimum-wage hike Uchitelle cites is from people who are afraid the hike wont
do enough: No one opposed to an increase argues that $5.15 an hour is adequate
to keep body and soul together. It is not. The argument instead is that
employers will not pay unskilled workers any more than the minimum. The problem
with that argument is that employers are increasingly doing so. The evidence is
in the statistics.
He concludes: The point
of a government-mandated minimum wage is to ensure that no one is impoverished
on the job. Employers are recognizing the absurdity of paying only $5.15 an
hour, and in the absence of congressional action, cities are joining states in
trying to fix the problem. But if employers truly recognize the absurdity,
whats stopping them from paying their workers more than the minimum? Thered be
no reason to get the government more involved.
For the rest of Uchitelles story on the minimum
wage drives,
click here.
Bushs
Tax Cuts: Budget-Busting Failures
Sundays story by David Rosenbaum, Bush Wants to
Create More Jobs, but How? declares Bushs tax cuts budget-busting failures:
Three straight years of tax cuts, the president's tonic for whatever ails the
economy, have not improved the jobs picture but have led to the largest budget
deficit in history. Rosenbaum makes no mention of the Bush administrations
profligate spending habits-at the Times, tax cuts are always Public Enemy No.
1.
At the end, Rosenbaum
quotes William C. Dudley of the brokerage firm Goldman Sachs to hammer home the
message of Keynesian economics: The tax cuts Mr. Bush worked so hard for might
have led to more jobs more quickly if they had been aimed more at low- and
moderate-income households, Mr. Dudley said, because those people are the most
likely to spend their tax savings. But, Mr. Dudley added, that ship has
sailed.
For more of Rosenbaums critique of Bushs economic
plans,
click here.
Palestinian
Fears of Suffocating Security
More Middle East moral equivalency at the Times. A
sentence from Greg Myres
Monday piece from Jerusalems Old City equates Jewish fears of suicide
bombers to Palestinian fears of Israeli soldiers trying to stop those suicide
bombers: Only a few years ago, all faiths could walk the streets of this
ancient city [Jerusalem] and visit some of the world's most important religious
shrines without fear of a suicide bombing or a suffocating security presence.