Posted by
Bill Crawford on Saturday, March 20, 2010 8:14:50 AM
I have deliberately avoided this forum, despite my stratosperic anxiety, because I wanted to get as accurate as possible before I started shooting into the crowd. In the process of doing so, I managed to bump into the NY Times people on a few occasions last week. They never seem to dissappoint.
Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist (I so love that moniker) thinks that there are myths to dispel about this great health care reform movement. The first myth is that Obama is trying to take over one sixth of the economy. The second is that the proposal doesn't control costs. The third is that it is fiscally irresponsible, which he uses the CBO estiates to counter.
I'll refer to the first two in my own mythical tome, but the third is amateur city: Paul knows the CBO follows the procedures set by it's Congressional masters. They raise their objections when they think those procedures are bogus. This may be why they used the word "preliminary" in the CBO report as prominently as they did here. I know that word is in Mr. Krugman's vocabulary.
Paul closes with "This is a reasonable, responsible plan. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise". This is the same tabloid that told me in 2003 that if I believed in the Iraq War, I "needed therapy". No kidding.
Never mind all that. A few days later, the Time's token conservative, David Brooks pines in. David evidently feels that, unlike himself, both sides have Obama all wrong. "Obama aways has been a center-left pragmatic reformer", and we can't see that because "We live in a country in which many people live in information cocoons in which they talk to members of their own party and read blogs of their own sect". I see. Earth to David: I get to see the other side of things every time I open an urban newspaper or national newsweekly. I have my pick of network channels where the editorial stylings of Williams and Couric flower daily for me.
He has more, though. "In a sensible country, people would see Obama as a president trying to define a modern brand of moderate progressivisim" (italics mine). This is the NY Times ambassador to conservatism, folks.
The only difference between the Old Grey Lady and the Village Voice is their operating budget. And from the looks of it, the boys in the Subscription Dept. on 43rd Street are doing their best to level that playing field.