Where is the money suppose to come from for this proposed commuter rail tunnel linking NYC and New Jersey. The Gray Lady never quite gets around to answering this in a highly partisan editorial that takes aim at Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey for canceling the project. It also praises Mayor Mike Bloomberg of NYC for offering up an alternative plan that the editorial admits “sketchy.” What? N.J. voters know their state is out of money….

Despite all the evidence out there to the contrary, the New York Times continues to argue in favor of government spending as the antidote for economic malaise and fiscal restraint. While the paper is certainly entitled to editorialize against public officials, the highly partisan and condescending tone it adopts here against Gov. Christ Christie of New Jersey and his budget cutting policies is highly instructive.

A Quinnipiac University survey shows public sentiment very much in support of the governor’s decision to cancel an $8.7 billion commuter rail tunnel to New York City. The poll shows 53 percent of voters supporting Christie versus 37 percent who do not. Over 30 percent of Democrats also said they support Christie’s actions.

Using the 2005 initial projection of $5 billion, New Jersey officials proceeded to obtain $3 billion from the federal government, spend $600 million in start-up costs, and commit another $1.2 billion in contracts and fees.  Now, as the expected cost of the project has ballooned to $10 billion – double the original estimate – construction has ceased as the state’s budget woes have worsened.  This essentially means taxpayers will have spent over $4.5 billion for nothing.

But NYT sees the matter much differently. Somehow the federal government will come through with additional funding to defray costs for the “much- needed” mass transit tunnel, the editorial says. Moreover, Michael Bloomberg, the enlightened mayor of NYC, has “come to the rescue” with a proposal for an alternative tunnel.

“It’s nice to know somebody is thinking big about the region’s economic future,” the NYT sneers even as it acknowledges that the “Bloomberg plan is sketchy, and it is not clear where the money would come from.” That’s quite a pivot.

Gov. Christie connects with voters because they understand as he does that N.J. is essentially bankrupt and cannot afford new spending schemes. In many respects, the budget process at the state level is broken. It is hard reality that continues to elude the Gray Lady, but not the Republican governor it so loaths. Gov. Christie understands cost projects for infrastructure projects are often way off and cost more over the long-term. That’s why he was right to terminate this project in the cradle. For this he deserves praise not scorn.

But the concluding paragraph takes aim at Christie for advancing policies that are consistent with Tea Party sentiment.

“Perhaps some sage from one of the big universities — Princeton or Rutgers? — could help the state spend almost $60 million from the federal government to weatherize New Jersey homes,” the editorial suggests. “After all, Mr. Christie is busy making news and charming the right by downsizing his state, so it falls on others to think about the future.”

Perhaps the NYT could refrain from “charming” big government proponents who have made infrastructure projects quite untenable thanks to unchecked deficit spending.

While it has every right to editorialize on behalf of global warming alarmists, the NYT should at least acknowledge the existence of updated research and the simmering scientific disputes, which have greatly unsettled the so-called “consensus” green activists have used as a rationale to advance the  Kyoto Protocol and other regulatory schemes…

Precious little progress has been made from the alarmist perspective since the United Nations climate change conference held last December in Copenhagen, Denmark, a blogger for the New York Times concedes. Looking ahead to the next conference, which opens at the end of November in Cancun, Mexico there is now speculation that this may be last gathering. Although green activists continue for push for a binding international agreement to lower emissions, government officials are unlikely to advance any substantive measures.

“Now many are wondering whether the process itself, under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is so flawed that it should be scrapped,” the blog says.  “Is it realistic to expect that 200 nations with vastly different interests, from China to Saudi Arabia to Bolivia to Micronesia, can come together to address a problem that will affect them in vastly different ways? Is there a better way to attack a global problem largely caused by a handful of large industrialized countries? Should the next so-called `conference of the parties’ be the last?”

Since the mid-1990s, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been invoked as the final authority on the question of man-made global warming. But it has come under severe criticism recently over its methodologies and procedures.

The U.N. tasked The InterAcademy Council (IAC), based in Amsterdam, to investigate the IPCC. Its findings, published on August 30 concluded that the IPCC was predisposed toward conflicts of interest, made multiple assertions about climate change that lack scientific support, and inappropriately interjected itself into the policy making process.

Yes, the process is flawed but somehow the NYT never gets around to raising questions about the so-called scientific consensus that has been used as a rationale for international regulatory agreements.

“A relatively small group of countries — the United States, China, Russia, India, Brazil and the European Union — are responsible for the vast bulk of global carbon emissions,” the blogger observes. “Why can’t they get together and agree on some common steps and a plan for providing aid to smaller, more vulnerable countries? Why do Cuba and Sudan have to sign onto whatever they agree to? In fact, such discussions now regularly take place outside the United Nations ambit, whether in the Group of 20 or other international forums, or in bilateral talks like those between the United States and China on clean energy innovation.”

Just prior to the November elections, the NYT ran yet another editorial criticizing public officials who have raised questions about the evidence offered to support the idea that human activity has been driving climate change. This despite an avalanche of data that shows nature forces are largely responsible for warming and cooling trends.

Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist and professor emeritus with the University of Virginia, suggests in a recent essay for The American Thinker, that NYT become better acquainted with recent developments and the sentiment of its own readership.

“The NY Times may be seriously out of step with its own readers,” he wrote. “At least that’s how I would judge the results of a survey of readers of Scientific American, a magazine that has been just as alarmist about AGW as the Times:

**77% believe that current climate change is caused by natural processes

**68% think we should do nothing about climate change, are powerless to stop it

**90% approve of climate scientists debating the issue in public forums

**83% believe that the UN-IPCC is corrupt, prone to groupthink, and has a political agenda.

The New York Times is doing a disservice to its readers and to the US public in stoking unreasonable fears not based on solid science.”

George Soros, the radical, far-left billionaire, with a long history of antipathy toward American interests, now sits on a U.N. panel charged with organizing a $100 billion wealth transfer from the developed world to the underdeveloped world in the name of environmentalism. News of his involvement here is buried away in a NYT report but it should be the lead sentence.

Developing countries must help combat the many challenges associated with global warming, according to a United Nations (U.N.) panel. That is assuming all concerned parties accept the premise of catastrophic human induced climate change and the New York Times certainly does. The price tag has been fixed at $100 billion and the villain here is of course the United States, which refuses to comply with anti-emissions regulations.

It’s a familiar script that is wearing thin. The alarmist rationale has been dealt serious setbacks in recent months thanks to updated research and the growing “climategate” scandal. But international bureaucrats and transnationalists opposed to America’s free market system remain undeterred in their course of action.

Last December, “international leaders” agreed that it would be necessary for the developed world to fork over 100 billion by 2020 during the Copenhagen climate summit. But the methodology and details of this transfer remain a point of consternation and contention. The U.N. panel has just released a report that offers up some suggestions.

“The attitude of the developing nations was that the industrialized world caused the pollution, so the richer states should cut a check for reparations and another check to help pursue clean development,” the NYT report notes. “The richer nations balked at the prospect. Some of those differences remain in the report: the developing world thinks the financing should come in the form of public aid, whereas the developed world wants to rely heavily on private investment, for example. The differences were indeed on display during the release of the report.”

The nexus between environmentalism and anti-Americanism is not difficult to unravel. Van Jones, an avowed communist, who previously served as a czar for the Obama Administration, was forced to step down when far left history came to light. Buried deep in the NYT piece is a revealing nugget that should have been in the lead.

“The 21-member United Nations panel included Lawrence H. Summers, the White House’s departing national economics adviser; the billionaire financier George Soros; Ernesto Cordero Arroyo, the finance minister of Mexico; and Christine Lagarde, the French economic minister,” the NYT reports.

That’s right, the same George Soros who has railed against American independence and sovereignty is now organization a massive wealth transfer to third world countries in the name of environmentalism.

The headline should read: George Soros Led United Nations Panel Organizes $100 Billion Anti-U.S. Shakedown Effort.

There is some good reporting here that flushes out engaging personalities from the across the country who are determined to make a stand on behalf of liberalism and the Democratic Party. But the double-standard is evident. Tea Party activists do not typically receive congenial coverage. The NYT, which is often so certain of lower attendance figures for right-leaning rallies does not have any hard numbers or facts, to account for the numbers its cites…

There are no official figures given by the National Park Service of the Washington D.C. rally held this past weekend that included liberal activists from across the country.  The event sponsored by Viacom’s Comedy Central Network was widely viewed as rejoinder to the rally Glenn Beck of Fox News held at the Lincoln Memorial in August.

The “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” did not include any Democratic politicians and instead featured Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, two left leaning political satirists. The article does a good job of flushing out some of the key personalities and reporting on clever messaging. It does not fixate on the attendance, which would be fine, if the NYT did not go to such great lengths to dismiss turnout figures for Beck’s rally.

“The National Park Service did not offer a formal crowd estimate,” the report says. “But Judy McGrath, the chief executive of Viacom’s MTV Networks unit, said she had been told by the Parks Service that there were `well over 200,000 people” at the rally. Mr. Colbert offered his own guess in a Twitter message: “Early estimate of crowd size at rally: 6 billion.”

“Four friends, dressed as giant tea bags in a spoof of the Tea Party, said Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert were the only ones they felt expressed their point of view,” the report explains. “For everything that’s happened in the past two years, ‘The Daily Show’ is how we cope,” said one of the tea bags, S. J. Klein, a 40-year-old man from Anchorage.”

“Alex Foxworthy, a 26-year-old doctoral student from Richmond, Va., summed it up like this: “The battle for the American mind right now is between talk show hosts and comedians. I choose the comedians,” the report continues.

In sharp contrast to the critical view it took of the Beck rally, the NYT plays it straight here. Participants are quoted at length without derisive afterthoughts. The 200,000 estimate from the MTV official does not sound unreasonable on the surface. However, it do not match even more restrained estimates for the “Restoring Honor” event the Fox News personality organized.

Mr. Colbert lampoons conservatives on his show, “The Colbert Report,” and at the rally he played a victim of fear gradually shown the light by Mr. Stewart.

“Your reasonableness is poisoning my fear,” Mr. Colbert was quoted as saying.

It appears the NYT was called out for slyly overstating turnout for the Stewart/Colbert event.

“An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the geographical reach of the rally,” correction reads in the online version. “It stretched several long blocks west of the Capitol, not almost to the Washington Monument.”

Even so, there are several paragraphs at work here that provide readers with an informative view of what transpired without editorializing. This approach should be allied to right-leaning events. Here an activist offers up a guess as to the actual attendance without authoritative sourcing and Colbert jokes about figures that go into the billions.

If there’s that much uncertainty, then the report should acknowledge this much up front. To do otherwise, allows for spinsters on both sides of the political spectrum to peddle their agenda.

Several paragraphs down into a report on the “One Nation” rally readers finally learn that liberal activists could not match the crowds Glenn Beck attracted to the Lincoln Memorial in August. The key sponsors of the event, which include organized labor, are permitted to offer up factually dubious quotes without any criticism or examination.

Left wing activists who organized the “One Nation Coming Together” event at the Lincoln Memorial earlier this month as a rejoinder to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally fell flat in terms of attendance, energy and enthusiasm. Even the New York Times was forced to concede that liberal demonstrators could not match attendance figures for Beck’s Aug. 28 rally also held at the Lincoln Memorial. The first few paragraphs are sympathetic and supportive of “One Nation,” which was funded and supported by organized labor.

“More than 300 groups organized Saturday’s march to build momentum for progressive causes like increased job-creation programs and to mobilize liberal voters to flock to the polls next month,” readers are told. “The rally’s sponsors, including the N.A.A.C.P., the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the Sierra Club and the National Council of La Raza, said they also hoped to demonstrate that they, not the Tea Party, represented the nation’s majority.”

Tens of thousands were reportedly in attendance on a bright, sunny auspicious day replete with American flags and unifying themes that contrast with what organizers called the “divisiveness” of the Tea Party. But this is a very debatable assertion. It can be argued that each of the “One Nation” sponsors have advanced divisive polices that are offensive to mainstream sensibilities. This point is not raised here and as a general rule reporters should not interject themselves into the debate. However, the NYT has not operated in a restrained, detached manner when reporting on Tea Party activism. As TimesCheck has previously noted, reporter Kate Zernik has often invoked race as a way to delegitimize small government activists.

If this approach carried over to coverage of liberal activists, questions would be raised about the motivations and ethics of liberal demonstrators.  Of course, the NYT is not inclined in this direction.  However, it does deserve credit for reporting on a key fact; 13 paragraphs down into the story, but that’s still progress.

“Significant areas of the National Mall that had been filled during Mr. Beck’s rally were empty,” the report acknowledges. “In a broadcast on Thursday, Mr. Beck criticized the liberals’ march, saying his supporters paid their own way to drive to Washington, while labor unions chartered hundreds of buses to ferry demonstrators to Saturday’s rally.”

If the reverse were true, it would most likely be reported in both the headline and lead paragraph. “Liberal Activists Surge Past Glenn Beck’s Divisive Rally,” the NYT would have fit nicely with the paper’s preferred narrative.

Remarkably, the NYT does inform readers that at least some of Beck’s observations about the liberal rally are on the money.

“On Thursday Mr. Beck warned that the march included Marxist, Communist and revolutionary groups,” the report says. “Among the organizations endorsing the march were the Communist Party USA, the United Church of Christ, Jewish Funds for Justice, the National Urban League, the National Baptist Convention, People for the American Way and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.”

But then again, the NYT has a different view of extremism.

Just make it up. That appears to be mindset at work in a front page story and subsequent business section report that takes aim at Tea Party activists who helped to shift public sentiment against President Obama’s agenda and the Democratic Party. An anonymous source is used to advance the idea that Tea Party is synonymous with extremism...

Somehow average Americans who pine for constitutional limited government and the ideals of the founding period are considered extreme and unhinged. Meanwhile, White House officials and career legislators who expand the national debt and subjugate free enterprise are viewed as mainstream. That’s the world, according to the New York Times.

Consider the sub-head used on a front page story that ran on Monday about Obama Administration officials who now speculate that their party’s fortunes could be uplifted by interlinking the GOP with the Tea Party movement.

The sub-head reads: “Democrats Could Cast Rivals as Being Taken Over By Extremists.” That is to say, with a little help from the NYT. Political analysts from across the political spectrum see strong indications that control of both congressional chambers are in play for the mid-term elections.  Larry Sabato, a political science professor with the University of Virginia, has said definitively that the GOP will at least take the House.

However, White House operatives believe that can use Tea Party candidates as a foil in key races, the report claims. This idea is predicated on the notion that a significant number of voters could react against Republican budget-cutting ideas they find offensive, the NYT tells readers.

“We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” an anonymous Democratic strategist is quoted as saying. This source has been in touch with White House officials but cannot give his name since the strategy talks were private, the article explains.

Right away, this approach to reporting should raise concerns. The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and other media associations now question the use of anonymity as a reporting tool. This is not a hard and fast rule and exceptions can be made in compelling situations. But ideally, an anonymous source should be intermixed with identifiable, on the record sources who substantiate the major points made by another individual who is in a compromised situation.

For their part, White House officials deny there is any kind of orchestrated effort that would pivot against Tea Party activism. The NYT appears to be working overtime to manufacture its own news.  The anonymous source is quoted again later in the same front page report.

“The Democratic strategist said voters did not now see much threat to them from a Republican takeover of Congress, even though some Tea Party-backed candidates and other Republicans have taken positions that many voters consider extreme, like shutting down the government to get their way, privatizing Social Security and Medicare and ending unemployment insurance,” the report continues. “So far, Mr. Obama has largely limited his campaigning to fundraisers and small events. That will change soon as he plays a bigger role to rally the flagging faithful, officials said.

If the NYT would like to suggest that a large percentage of voters would recoil and react against Republican budget cutting plans, this idea should be sourced and attributed. Instead, the reports offer up blanket assertions meant to marginalize the Tea Party movement. In reality, there is just as much polling evidence indicative of growing appetite for entitlement reform and fiscal restraint at the federal level.

Just one day after its front page report on the alleged White House election plot ran, the NYT ran another piece appearing in its Tuesday business section that took another swipe at Tea Party activists.  This latest report was built around a town hall chat in Washington D.C. with President Obama. Here, he challenged Tea Party participants to offer up specifics about which federal benefits they would cut.

But the most telling part of the story concerns White House reaction to the earlier report based on anonymous sourcing that detailed fall campaign strategy.

“The White House denied an article in The New York Times on Monday saying that Mr. Obama’s political advisers were considering national advertising to cast the Republican Party as having been all but taken over by the Tea Party movement,” the report says.

`The story that led The New York Times yesterday was flat out wrong,’ Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said in an e-mail message. “The White House has never discussed, contemplated or weighed such an ad campaign.” Mr. Pfeiffer said the article `was based on the thinnest of reeds,’ an anonymous source. The Times stood by the report.”

But the White House has a point and unless the NYT can produce on the record sources, the two reports coupled together give the appearance of agenda-laced, manufactured reporting that takes aim against small government activists.

There’s no question that Democratic operatives will attempt to seize specific comments and policy stances in key states where they suspect that some Tea Party candidates may have liabilities. But that’s not the real story. The energy and activism of Tea Party movements is a huge net plus for Republicans going into a mid-term election cycle when turnout tends to be lower.

The attempt to discredit and defame a growing, vibrant political movement that has helped to reawaken America’s revolutionary roots will continue unabated up to Nov. 2. But it will not go unchecked and unchallenged.

Although the Obama White House is filled to the rim with former lobbyists, Rep. John Boehner’s alliances and connections with pro-business groups are somehow illegitimate and unseemly. With the mid-term elections just a few weeks away, the idea here is to take down and discredit an effective, well-liked minority leader who is well positioned to become the next House Speaker.

Private strategy sessions organized in concert with free market activists and lobbyists who are united in their opposition to new regulatory schemes are suggestive of undue influence and in direct conflict with the best interests of average Americans, The New York Times strongly implies in a front page Sunday report. The idea here is to discredit and delegitimize Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) just a few weeks before the mid-term elections that could help elect him as the next House Speaker.

While the report is framed as a straight news story, it is in reality a hit piece meant to coincide with intensified White House criticism of the affable, well-liked leader of the opposition. President Obama mentioned Boehner by name eight times in a Cleveland speech last week that focused on economics. Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is set to begin airing new ads that criticize Boehner for opposing additional state aid for teachers and Medicare. And, the NYT is doing its part to interlink the Ohio Republican with special interests.

Reporter Eric Lipton is particularly scandalized by Boehner’s alliances with business leaders who were opposed to the government takeover of the financial sector earlier this year.

“He [Boehner] maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS,” Lipton writes. “They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.”

But are Boehner’s lobbying connections somehow out of proportion with what is typical for Washington D.C. and appropriate for an official in his position? As an ardent, consistent supporter of private industry, it is neither surprising nor scandalous to discover that he has attracted support from  like-minded outfits such as the Chamber of Commerce.

Moreover, Boehner has never postured as someone who would shun business interests that share his policy preferences. By contrast, President Obama promised to keep his White House free and unfettered from a concentration of lobbying influences while running for president. This pledge has long since been abandoned.

Tim Carney, a senior columnist with The Washington Examiner, and a noted author, has compiled a data set that now includes 50 former lobbyists who work in the Obama White House. Where is the NYT report that calls attention to potential influence peddling and corruption from inside the executive branch?

Here are just a few of the big hits Carney calls attention to in his latest piece.

“The IRS general counsel is a former lobbyist for the Swiss Bankers Association

Mark Patterson, former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, is chief of staff at Treasury, and he never received a waiver.

Obama’s top food safety guy (Michael Taylor) is a Monsanto lobbyist, and his top agriculture trade guy (Isi Siddiqui) is an agri-chem lobbyist.

Joe Biden’s chief of staff and deputy chief of staff are both former corporate lobbyists with clients including oil companies and Fannie Mae.”

Under the  — are you kidding me category–  the NYT quotes no less of an authority than current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) who is greatly offended by Boehner’s relationship with key lobbyists.

“The woman he hopes to replace, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, derided him on Friday as having met `countless times with special-interest lobbyists in an effort to stop tough legislation’ that would regulate corporations and protect consumers,” the Times reports.

Let’s break this down.

In just the 2010 election cycle so far, Speaker Pelosi has received about $200,000 from Political Action Committees (PACs)  connected with organized labor, according to OpenSecrets.org. This is just a small part of the whole. Going back to the 2008 elections and 2006 elections when she was at the apex of her influence Pelosi received substantial donations from some of the more politically potent unions.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) PAC, for instance, contributed $10,000 to Pelosi’s campaign in 2008 and 2006, federal records show. It is also worth noting that Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has received over $900,000 from organized labor for her congressional campaigns, including over $30,000 from the SEIU.

The connection with SEIU is of particular importance because it continues to lead the charge for The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which includes the anti-secret ballot card check provision and binding arbitration. The legislation has stalled on Capitol Hill and remains extremely unpopular with the public, opinion polls show. Even so, union bosses expect payback on the substantial donations they have made to the Democratic Party in the past two election cycles especially. This is where the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) comes into play. Craig Becker, a controversial recess appointee, has strong ties to the SEIU and AFL-CIO. He has argued in the past that board can take action without congressional approval.

A careful review of federal records available through OpenSecrets.org shows that Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have both raised well above what Rep. Boehner has in the current election cycle from lobbyists to say nothing of the power and influence of organized labor.

There’s a nice opening here for a report that calls attention to extra-constitutional activities that do the bidding of powerful union officials at the expense of employers and average Americans looking for work.

American taxpayers are feeling a little nostalgic about former President Bush and his tax cuts. There’s no question that they were just what the doctor ordered after the 9/11 terror attacks. But NYT columnist Paul Krugman is opposed to extending the cuts because he sees them as a giveaway to rich. The alternative approach he suggests is quite costly in its own right…

Whatever voters may think of former President George W. Bush these days, they think very highly of their disposable income, cost of living and bank accounts. That’s why it’s smart politically for Republicans to call for an extension of the Bush tax cuts set to expire at the end of this year.

But it’s also makes good public policy, contrary to what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has argued. With the U.S. still mired in recession, now would be a particularly bad time to further burden Americans with rate increases. Here’s what the expiration will mean for working families and average citizens.

• 35% bracket which will increase to 39.6%
• 33% bracket which will increase to 36%
• 28% bracket which will increase to 31%
• 25% bracket which will increase to 28%
• 10% and 15% will condense to 15%
• The capital gains tax will increase from 15% to 20%
• The tax on dividends will increase from 15% to 39.6%

In his latest column, Krugman predictably claims that only the richest Americans will benefit from an extension of the Bush tax cuts. But congressional Democrats and liberal columnists have  a very elastic view of the rich in America. Small business owners and two income families beset with high living costs are considered too rich from the vantage point of Capitol Hill.

“What’s at stake here?” Krugman asks. “According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. For the sake of comparison, it took months of hard negotiations to get Congressional approval for a mere $26 billion in desperately needed aid to state and local governments. And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent.”

In point of fact, the rich are absorbing more of the tax burden now than ever before. This is hard fact that Krugman and others repeatedly omit from their analysis. Higher income households saved more in actual dollars from the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts only because the poorer households paid very little taxes in the first place. The Heritage Foundation has just released a study that exposes and debunks ten of the top myths economically illiterate columnists continue to circulate.

“In 2000, the top 60 percent of taxpayers paid 100 percent of all income taxes. The bottom 40 percent collectively paid no income taxes,” the study explains. “Lawmakers writing the 2001 tax cuts faced quite a challenge in giving the bulk of the income tax savings to a population that was already paying no income taxes.”

“Rather than exclude these Americans, lawmakers used the tax code to subsidize them,” the report continues. “(Some economists would say this made that group’s collective tax burden negative.) First, lawmakers lowered the initial tax brackets from 15 percent to 10 percent and then expanded the refundable child tax credit, which, along with the refundable earned income tax credit (EITC), reduced the typical low-income tax burden to well below zero.”

Even when Krugman is forced to concede that certain tax cuts benefit the middle class, he views them as an  “expensive proposition.” But why is government spending left out of the equation? President Obama has just called for another $50 billion in “stimulus spending” that will supposedly jump start the economy. (this added on top of previous spending packages, to say nothing of runaway entitlements) As it turns out, allowing the political class to have a larger slice of taxpayer earnings is also an expensive proposition.

Another missing piece concerns the accelerated economic activity that followed from the Bush program. In retrospect, the tax cuts were just what the doctored order after the 9/11 terror attacks. But it’s important to understand why. Here again, the Heritage study is quite helpful and insightful.

“Government spending does not `pump new money into the economy’ because government must first tax or borrow that money out of the economy,” the report explains. “Claims that tax cuts benefit the economy by “putting money in people’s pockets” represent the flip side of the pump-priming fallacy. Instead, the right tax cuts help the economy by reducing government’s influence on economic decisions and allowing people to respond more to market mechanisms, thereby encouraging more productive behavior.”

Although Bush left office as an unpopular president, history is beginning to catch up with the wisdom of his tax policies. In fact, it could be argued that they may have been the most well timed tax cuts in history given the destruction in NYC. A new poll in the critical state of Ohio shows that a majority would prefer him back in office over the incumbent. Regardless of who is up or down in the current political cycle, there’s no escaping a key lesson evident in recent history.

Supply side tax cuts increase revenue and heighten economic activity every time they are tried.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has offered  a comprehensive, highly detailed plan for financial and economic renewal that has inspired small government activists across the country. It has also earned positive media coverage from left leaning sources that are normally hostile toward free market concepts. But the New York Times is not part of this mix. Columnist Paul Krugman claims Ryan’s plan is an unrealistic giveaway to the rich. Meanwhile, entitlement spending is sustainable and responsible?

Columnist Paul Krugman is agitated, if not panicked.

An audacious proposal aimed at reforming collapsing entitlements, reducing debt and alleviating burdensome taxation has been on the receiving end of positive press coverage. It must therefore be taken down and discredited as an unrealistic sham replete with tax favors for the rich.  Even as The Washington Post and other left-leaning publications provide readers with a balanced and comprehensive critique, it is instructive to note that The New York Times feels a need to perpetuate entitlement illusions.

Democrats who have added a new financial liability on top of existing programs in the form of ObamaCare get a free pass, while Krugman zeros in on Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for offering up a proposal that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says would make Medicare permanently solvent. Ryan has called for a voucher system that would allow seniors to shop for their own private insurance as part of his Roadmap for America’s Future. This is but one aspect of a highly detailed financial plan set up in stark contrast to the “government-centered ideology” that now holds sway in Washington D.C.

It is the ideology Krugman and the NYT are desperate to preserve.

“And we already know, from experience with the Medicare Advantage program, that a voucher system would have higher, not lower, costs than our current system,” he argues. “The only way the Ryan plan could save money would be by making those vouchers too small to pay for adequate coverage. Wealthy older Americans would be able to supplement their vouchers, and get the care they need; everyone else would be out in the cold. In practice, that probably wouldn’t happen: older Americans would be outraged — and they vote. But this means that the supposed budget savings from the Ryan plan are a sham.”

The correlation between consumer choice, greater market discipline and lower costs has been evident throughout human history. But this fundamental point is lost in the Krugman analysis. New studies show that HMO programs with private options reduce costs. They are not so dissimilar from what Ryan has proposed.

The whole point of Krugman’s piece is to close off debate. With demographics changing, more Americans are becoming open and receptive to the idea of large scale entitlement reform.  Big government advocates are concerned for the same reason Tea Party activists are emboldened.

Despite an avalanche of negative press coverage, Nevada U.S  Senate Candidate Sharron Angle remains very competitive in her race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. For this reason, she needs to be taken down and discredited along with Tea Party activists who are changing American politics…

After taking direction from left wing editors opposed to constitutional limited government and Tea Party activism, New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney glared in disgust at the video image, before launching into his agenda laced, hysterical, high-pitched, condescending, factually dubious front page smear piece aimed against Nevada’s rising star Sharron Angle.

No doubt, Nagourney took cues from the big government activists who masquerade as detached news professionals. He also makes blanket assertions about the political viability of conservative policy stances that are very debatable. The remaining observations from the preceding paragraph are skewed and overly speculative in their own way.

But they are also written very much in the spirit of the Nagourney’s own report, which maintains a derisive, opinionated tone from beginning to end. Consider the lead paragraph.

“Sharron Angle leaned across a table in her campaign office here, defending her suddenly embattled campaign to defeat Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, under the gaze of a half-dozen advisers and an official videographer packed into the room.”

This is the kind of hackneyed, trite, biased and unseemly approach to campaign coverage that necessitates media watchdogs like TimesCheck. Is there anything written or said here that a paid operative of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would have done differently and to greater effect to sully the reputation of his election challenger? In reality, there is a little room for improvement.

“Harry Reid should be brought up on wage and hour law violations, if he does not pay the reporter,” Don Todd, a former Labor Department official now with Americans for Limited Government said in an interview. “The left wing incorrectly assumes women are naturally part of their constituency, so they become alarmed when they see someone out there who does not follow that script.”

Angle is a Tea Party favorite who prevailed over moderate, establishment Republicans in her party’s primary. While NYT does not deny that Reid is in political trouble, it does peddle out the idea that he would be far easy to dislodge with a conventional Republican candidate. One of Angle’s primary opponents is trotted out here to help substantiate liberal spin that is passed off as reporting.

The special election held earlier this year in Pennsylvania 12 demonstrates that conservative-leaning candidates in both parties now have traction with voters. Here a centrist Republican lost out to a Democrat who opposed ObamaCare and environmental regulations, while supporting Second Amendment rights. Yet, in Nevada the NYT tells readers that conservatism is somehow a liability.

“Since Ms. Angle won, her campaign has been rocked by a series of politically intemperate remarks and awkward efforts to retreat from hard-line positions she has embraced in the past like phasing out Social Security. There have also been a staff shake-up and run-ins with Nevada journalists, including one in which a television reporter chased her through a parking lot trying to get her to answer a question.”

Apparently, the misuse of reconciliation to force through unpopular, coercive and costly healthcare legislation is not a hardline position. Advancing the agenda of big labor and environmental extremists at the expense of average Americans is also considered mainstream.

There is no denying how beneficial the Tea Party movement was to Angle in her primary, the NYT concedes. Even so, he views are unacceptable to the larger electorate, the report claims. Faint praise is always followed up with a qualifying point.

“But some of her conservative positions could prove to be a hurdle come November,” the report says. “She has for example called for the elimination of the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency…”

In her interview with Nagourney, Angle draws a connection between the modern conservative movement and the founding period that helps to put her candidacy into proper perspective. Names like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin still resonate in America. Meanwhile, Sen. Reid’s son Rory is reticent to invoke the family surname in his own separate race for Nevada governor.

After orchestrating an incessant chain of negative, misleading press coverage crafted to sabotage her candidacy, the NYT is miffed to find that Angle is not exactly enthusiastic about interacting with the liberal media.

“In the course of the interview, Ms. Angle spoke slowly and cautiously,” the report says. “She appeared reluctant to engage, frequently citing stock answers to questions.” Not too subtle.

The report also ends on a note of criticism compliments of the Republican establishment, which claims Angle is not open to outside advice. Here the NYT concurs. But the key point is missed.

With an eye toward history, Angle places a greater premium on restoring the founding period than she does on placating elite opinion inside either major party.