NY Times Spin
Almost every day, something in the NY Times makes me happy to no longer work at ABC News.
At ABC my colleagues acted as if they were steeped in the Times, like tea bags. They got their entire view of the world from the Times. Anything different was “wrong” or “right wing.” It drove me crazy. Today, I'd have to be institutionalized, were I still at ABC, because the Times is particularly irritating.
First, the Times reports on Cuba’s economic liberalization.
Somehow, Cuba's "plans to lay off more than half a million people from the public sector...a bloated bureaucracy that has sapped motivation..." is not more evidence of the failure of central planning so often championed by the Times. It is simply Raul Castro completing his pledge "to make Cuba’s centralized, Soviet-style economy more efficient and open up opportunities for people.”
You see, Cuba’s economy is in “dire shape” not because of socialism, but because it is “grappling with the fallout from the global financial crisis and the aftermath of devastating hurricanes in 2008.”
At least today’s Wall Street Journal calls the change what it is: a long overdue "Tilt Toward Free Market."
Then the Times runs this misleading article: “GOP Allies Outspending Their Rivals; Democrats Expressing Alarm on Disparity.” The article must have been terrifying to Times readers and ABC News employees: It claims that “Outside groups supporting Republican candidates in House and Senate races across the country have been swamping their Democratic-leaning counterparts …”
Swamping? Yes, according to the Times.
Confirming “Democrats’ worst fears after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United Case in January that lifted a ban on direct corporate spending on political campaigns…” their opponents are funding “an array of Republican-oriented organizations that are set up so they can accept donations of unlimited size from individuals and corporations without having to disclose them. The situation raises the possibility that a relatively small cadre of deep-pocketed donors, unknown to the general public, is shaping the battle for Congress … it amounts to an effort on the part of wealthy Republican donors, as well as corporate interests, newly emboldened by regulatory changes, to buy the election…
There are only scattered clues that can be gleaned about the financing, like the two $1 million contributions from Louisiana companies tied to Harold Simmons, a Texas billionaire and longtime Republican donor who helped finance Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, in the campaign finance filings of one group, American Crossroads; and that David Koch, the billionaire co-owner of Koch Industries, is closely tied to another major player, Americans for Prosperity...
In Senate races, Republican-leaning interest groups outspent Democratic-leaning ones on television $10.9 million to $1.3 million…
A major question is how big a mark labor unions will be able to make for Democrats…but even their leaders seemed to indicate that they would not be able to match pro-Republican expenditures over the airwaves."
“If we try to compete in that game, we can’t compete,” said Richard Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O, “They have so much more resources.”
Nonsense. Again, the Journal gets it right:
Republican money “could rival political spending by labor unions and liberal organizations for the first time in years…”
Republicans “raised $50 million … Democrats raised $53 million…That is a change from two years ago, when spending by 527 organizations backing Democrats ran nearly triple that of groups supporting Republicans."
In all, about a dozen major conservative and business organizations whose leaders The Wall Street Journal interviewed plan to spend about "$300 million on the 2010 campaign, which would match major labor unions' and liberal organizations' plans …"
Oh. Looks pretty even. Happy election night.
stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com |
