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 time 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.

Contemporary civil rights organizations that support race conscious policies in contradiction to Martin Luther King’s emphasis on equality and character get a free pass from the New York Times, which repeats and recycles unfounded accusations aimed against Tea Party participants and Glenn Beck of Fox News. In many respects, the small government activists who took part in Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally are more in step with MLK’s convictions than their critics. It is the ideals of the founding period that make liberty possible. Not outdated, collapsing entitlements.

False allegations of racism aimed against Tea Party activists who favor constitutional restraints on federal power predictably resurfaced in a New York Times report that sought to discredit Glenn Beck’s Washington D.C. rally. Reporter Kate Zernike has a long history of invoking race as a way to discredit and marginalize Tea Party activism.

As TimesCheck has previously noted, there is a concerted effort in the news media to interlink small government activists with radical elements. “They tend to be white and male, with a disproportionate number above 45, and above 65,” Zernike laments in an earlier report. Their memories are of a different time, when the country was less diverse.”

The data does not substantiate the allegations. Even the New York Times/CBS poll, which typically oversamples Democrats, concluded Tea Party activists were sophisticated and well-educated. There’s also a Washington Post/ABC Poll that shows 20 percent of voters concur with the Tea Party’s economic concerns; that’s hardly suggestive of an irrelevant, radical fringe.

Glenn Beck, the Fox News conservative broadcaster who joined forces with the Tea Party in Washington D.C., has been accused by some of dishonoring the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial took place on the 47^th anniversary of King’s civil rights speech.

Zernike opens her “Political Memo” by citing unnamed critics who have made claims of racial insensitivity.

“It seems the ultimate thumb in the eye: that Glenn Beck would summon the Tea Party faithful to a rally on the anniversary of the March on Washington, and address them from the very place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech 47 years ago,” the report says. “After all, the Tea Party and its critics have been facing off for months over accusations of racism.”

The overarching purpose of the rally was to help reclaim the ideals civil rights movement from corrupt political elements that have a separate agenda, Beck explained in an interview with Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday.

On his radio program, Beck has argued that many of the key points King made in his “I Have a Dream” Speech have been lost. Organizations like the National Association of Advancement for Colored People (NAACP) and the Congressional Black Caucus are off the mark in the criticisms and have lost sight of long-standing principles, Tea Party leaders have suggested.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” King declared.

In her article, Zernike quotes from portions of Beck’s radio program that she later seeks to discredit and dismiss.

“We are the people of the civil rights movement,” Beck is quoted as saying. “We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights, justice, equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice.”

While it’s perfectly appropriate to question and analyze Beck’s commentary, the report proceeds to give critics a free pass. If Beck is so far off the mark, then why are self-described civil rights organizations like the NAACP pushing race based affirmative programs that discriminate on the basis of skin color?

Although the liberal news media has thus far failed to provide any concrete, tangible evidence of coordinated racism within Tea Party events, Zernike implies that these elements will be uncovered and exposed in due time.

“It has become an article of faith among Tea Party groups that any racist signs at rallies – `Go Back to Kenya’ directed at President Obama, is just one example – are carried by Democratic plants sent to make the Tea Party look bad,” she wrote.

For that matter, it is an “article of faith” among liberal media elites that the  best way to silence and shut down libertarian movements is to equate federalism and constitutionalism with racism.

Consider the following:

“In the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights, critics say they hear an echo of slavery, Jim Crow and George Wallace. Tea Party activists call that ridiculous: they do not want to take the country back to the discrimination of the past, they say, they just want the states to be able to block the federal mandate on health insurance.”

She doesn’t stop there:

“Still, the government programs that many Tea Party supporters call unconstitutional are the ones that have helped many black people emerge from poverty and discrimination,” the report continues. “It is not just that Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for Senate in Kentucky, said that he disagreed on principle with the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that required business owners to serve blacks. It is that many Tea Party activists believe that laws establishing a minimum wage or the federal safety net are an improper expansion of federal power.”

All very debatable propositions.

There’s a considerable amount of scholarship that shows how government programs have actually perpetuated dependency and poverty. The point about the minimum wage is equally problematic. Younger Americans just entering the workforce, be they black or white, tend to suffer the most when federal officials coerce higher wages.

An argument can be made that Tea Party activists are much closer in mind and spirit to the sentiments expressed by Dr. King than the contemporary civil rights establishment.

“In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check,” he said in his speech. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked `insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation…”

Unlike their liberal media critics, Tea Party activists understand that it is the ideals of the founding period and the constitutional order that helped make liberty possible in the first place; not bankrupt government programs.

Supposedly, Australia’s ambitious clean energy network will cost households just eight dollars a week over the next ten years, the NYT declares in a recent report. But new studies show that renewable, green technology is quite costly and cannot be sustained without government intervention. These facts go missing from the report…

So called renewable energy sources comprise just 6 percent of Australia’s power supplies, but this could change dramatically in the next few years if environmentalists have their druthers, according to a New York Times “Green Column” that highlights pending projects. Current plans call for the largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere to be built between now and 2013, the report says.

Although the report concedes that there are enormous logistical challenges connected with the project, it permits renewable industry advocates to talk around the engineering obstacles. The NYT also claims the renewable energy initiatives will generate modest costs for Australian citizens. But the experiences of European countries and U.S. states suggest otherwise and should be reported.

Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Spain, has produced a  study that shows green jobs are mostly temporary, heavily subsidized and subtract away from economic performance. The study also describes how higher energy prices associated with renewable have worked against Spain’s ability to compete internationally. The same is true in the U.S. where electricity rates are almost 40 percent higher in states with renewable standards than they are in states that do not have such standards, according to the Institute for Energy Research (IER).

Readers would greatly benefit if these numbers were juxtaposed with some of the blanket assertions made in the NYT piece. Unrealistic cost estimates are typically attached to political agendas at odds with the public interest. Ideally, journalists should work to expose rather than advance government perfidy.

Australia could switch over to renewable in just 10 years by constructing 12 thermal solar stations and 23 wind farms, a Melbourne University study cited in the report has concludes.

“This ambitious clean energy network would cost 370 billion dollars over 10 years, but the cost to each household is estimated at a mere 8 dollars a week,” the article declares. This is very questionable number in light of what has been experienced in America and Europe. But policymakers are proceeding full speed ahead.

“Worldwide, investment in renewable energies has boomed in recent years, with some $190 billion worth of new clean energy in 2008, according to the Renewables Global Status Report for 2009,” the report says. “The number of large solar plants tripled to 1,800 between 2007 and 2008, with the majority of new plants in Spain, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea and Portugal. The United States, the world’s biggest source of wind energy, installed five times Australia’s total wind energy capacity in 2008 alone.”

Yes, and it’s costing these countries a substantial amount without any appreciable impact on the climate at the expense of cheap, reliable energy sources. The NYT does a great disservice to readers here by way of cheerleading for renewable development in a country that has plenty of alternatives. Instead, it views Australia’s rich supply of resources as an obstacle.

“One of the problems in Australia is that the country has too many energy resources, and too much cheap coal,” the NYT observes. “The country is the leading exporter of coal in the world, and it generates about 80 percent of its electricity through coal-fired power stations.”

The political class understands that coercive measures such as “cap and trade” are needed to force private industry off politically incorrect energy sources. But key voices of dissent have emerged and that’s good news for Australians.

“While campaigning for elections on Saturday, the governing Labor Party and the conservative opposition appeared divided over whether to set such a `carbon price,’ which would force coal power operators to invest in cleaner technology and make renewable energy more competitive,” the report says.  Prime Minister Julia Gillard favors what the NYT describes as a “market-based carbon program,” while Tony Abbott is opposed.

Although environmental groups maintain that “cap and trade” policies have market-like qualities, their arguments do not hold up, especially on the cap side of the equation. The emissions restrictions are imposed through regulation not voluntary, market-based decisions. Moreover, because they are set through regulation and legislation they can be imposed for political reasons, not economic or environmental reasons.

This remains an unexplained part of the story that should be pursued and unpackaged in future reports.

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.

This time around the Democratic Party is better positioned to blunt a potential Republican surge in the mid-term elections The New York Times tells readers. But is there any hard evidence to back this up? No two election cycles are the same and thanks to organized labor Democrats are raising a lot more money in comparison with the 1994 blowout. But there’s more to the story…

Democrats are better prepared this time around for the mid-term elections than they were in 1994 when they lost control of congress and a sitting House Speaker was defeated, The New York Times informs readers in a piece that is replete with wishful thinking and cheerleading.

“Unlike 1994, when Republicans shocked Democrats by capturing dozens of seats held by complacent incumbents, there will be no sneak attacks this year,” the report observes. “Democrats have sensed trouble for more than a year, with the unrest from town-hall-style meetings last August providing indisputable evidence for any disbelievers. The result has been to goad many Democrats into better preparation: more fund-raising, earlier advertising, lots of time on the campaign trail.”

This is partially true in that President Obama’s declining poll numbers have not translated over into public enthusiasm for the Republican Party. Special elections held earlier this year demonstrate that Democrats who hold out against overspending can prevail over uninspiring Republicans. Rep. Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat, is quite mindful of how conservative his district is and has voted against many of the administration initiatives that have antagonized voters. He will not be so easy to dislodge.

However, there is no escaping the growing danger to incumbent Democrats who have been complicit in advancing unpopular public policy measures. The Cook Political Report, for instance, has seen an uptick in the number of House seats now leaning Republican. It also envisions a scenario in which Republicans could actually capture control of the Senate; something that was unthinkable to most analysts at outset of 2009.

The Tea Party movement is symptomatic of a larger dynamic at work within the electorate that suggests the incumbent party could experience mid-term election losses much larger than the historical average. The comparison with 1994 makes for an appropriate and engaging story angle. After controlling the House for 40 consecutive years, Democratic leaders including House Speaker Tom Foley (D-Wash.) overlooked key national trends. This time around incumbents know they are trouble. The Times article implies that savvy campaign tactics and meticulous fundraising can blunt a Republican surge.

“Many Democrats have raised more money so far this year than in the entire previous election cycle. They formed their campaign teams several months ahead of schedule and began running television advertisements earlier than ever,” the report says. “Realizing they could do little to improve the political climate, they are trying to fortify themselves with sharper tactics.”

But the fundraising dollars are more the byproduct of concentrated special interests that continue to push for legislation the public does not want. A more balanced report that is not so dismissive of Republican prospects would at least mention the cozy relationship that exists between the Democratic Party leadership and organized labor. In the 2008 election cycle, over 90 percent of the contributions from Political Action Committees (PACs) went to Democrats. But that also occurred at a time when the Republicans were down and out.

That’s not the case in 2010. Despite sympathetic media treatment, Democrats appear to be losing against Republicans who embrace Tea Party principles. That’s the real story, but it’s not one that is likely to be reported in The New York Times.

Missouri’s Proposition C, which is aimed at invalidated key provisions of ObamaCare, passed in Missouri with the substantial support of Democrats. In fact, it only fell short in two counties. Yet, the NYT continues to tell readers that measures lacks broad support beyond the confines of the conservative movement.  This is not mathematically possible given the percentage of voters who turned out…

As momentum continues to build against the coercive, mandatory requirements of Obama-Care, The New York Times is pinning its hopes on a dismissive narrative buried inside the newspaper’s national news section. Although an overwhelming majority of Missouri residents voted in favor of a proposition that would cancel out a key provision of President Obama’s healthcare law, the results do not necessarily translate over into any larger national trend, the NYT lectures readers.

“Practically speaking, it remains entirely uncertain what effect the vote will have,” a recent report claims. “The insurance requirement of the federal health care law does not come into effect until 2014. By then, experts say, the courts are likely to weigh in on the provision requiring people to buy insurance.”

But the vote is already having an impact beyond Missouri’s borders. Proposition C marks the beginning, not the end, of state level ballot initiatives that would amend their state constitutions to guard against federal encroachment. Moreover, there are now 22 states that have filed suit against Obama-Care.

Proposition C is not operating in a vacuum, yet the NYT is  now peddling the idea that only “conservative activists” are responsible for the lopsided result. If so, it would logically follow that the measure went down to defeat in the Democratic-leaning areas of the state. But this is not the case. Proposition C passed in every count except St. Louis and Kansas City. The real story here concerns the separation that exists between the Washington D.C . Democrats and their own party members back home.

This reality great complicates the liberal media’s agenda and must therefore be submerged within reports that identify Proposition C  with fringe groups that do not speak for mainstream voters who helped elect President Obama.

“Before the vote, the referendum had not appeared to  capture the general population’s attention with any broad, statewide media campaign,” the report observes. “Republican primary voters (who had the most competitive races on Tuesday) appeared to play a key role in the vote’s fate; far more voters (577,612) cast ballots in the state’s Republican primary for an open United States Senate seat as cast ballots for the Democratic candidates (315,787).”

And yet it has captured the attention and interest of voters who do not necessarily align themselves with the conservative movement. The spin here suggests that because Republican races were more competitive more of those voters showed up.  But the fact that Democrats still felt animated to show up and vote in favor of Proposition C despite a bland primary election cycle, is also suggestive.

The headline here could have read: Missouri Democrats Join with Tea Party Activists to Pass Anti Obama-Care Proposition By Large Margin.

But that doesn’t fit the narrative.

Tea Party activists have scored an important victory against ObamaCare in the state of Missouri where Proposition C passed by an overwhelming margin. In anticipation of  Tuesday’s vote, the NYT sought to discredit the effort with snide suggestions about “conservative activists.” Now that the ballot has passed, the news is buried.

Big government activists knew they were going to lose this one going into it.

On Tuesday, Missouri became the first of at least three states to vote on a ballot measure aimed against a key component of President Obama’s healthcare overhaul. By a margin of 71 percent to 29 percent, voters approved Proposition C, which invalidated the new federal law requiring individuals to either buy health insurance or pay a tax. The vote could add momentum to other efforts at the state level aimed against ObamaCare.

This would explain why the New York Times saw fit to run an article that made every effort to dismiss Proposition C as an inconsequential, low-turnout affair fueled by Tea Party activists who do not speak for mainstream opinion.

Proposition C is politically meaningless because it is only popular among a core group of activists who will be washed out by larger national trends over time, the NYT suggests.

“The referendum on the measure, known as Proposition C, is seen as an organizational test for the Tea Party and like-minded conservatives in a swing state that President Obama lost narrowly in 2008 and that has since moved measurably away from him,” the report says.

“But the campaign has been a low-key affair, with no television advertising, debates or celebrity Facebook endorsements. Leading Democrats, from Mr. Obama to Gov. Jay Nixon, have kept their distance, seeing little to be gained by contesting what strategists dismiss as a Republican straw poll with a foregone conclusion. The most competitive elections in Tuesday’s primary are on the Republican side, meaning turnout should be higher among those with natural sympathies for Proposition C.”

But even The Times is forced to concede that a majority of likely Democratic voters were not likely to vote against the proposal. It could become politically difficult for the Obama Administration to implement a law that lacks significant support in both major political parties; a point that goes missing in the report.

Moreover, the Tea Party’s connection to Proposition C is indicative of support that extends beyond the orbit of Republican and Democratic establishments. There is more at work here than just a narrow slice of the Republican establishment oriented against Obama’s policies for raw political reasons. There is a now a renewed interest in the values of the founding period that has helped galvanize efforts like Proposition C. The NYT and other liberal media outlets do not understand this phenomenon because from their perspective American began with New Deal, not with the Constitutional Convention.

This particular report’s fixation with “conservative activism” also misses the mark because in reality Missouri is a purple state. The two major parties are more or less evenly matched with slight edge to the Democrats in recent election cycles. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan is a far-left activist with ties to George Soros and the ACORN organization who is expected to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, has teamed up with Carnahan over the past few election cycles to block conservative ballot initiatives.

The Republican has not exactly been front and center in supporting small government initiatives that enjoy broad political support either, which speaks to the necessity of Tea Party movements that oppose established political entities.

Niger Ennis, a spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), said in an interview that liberal media personalities deliberately ignore the contributions black Americans have made to Tea Party rallies. A concerted has been made to circulate false allegations so as undermine grassroots activism that unites Americans across racial and party lines, he added. This would explain why reckless and inaccurate statements from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are reported without critical examination, Ennis observed.

“The idea of racism has political currency in our environment these days,” he said. “The worst insult today is to call someone who is white a racist. That’s very valuable unfortunately in our political discourse. That’s why the media continues to report unfounded accusations from the NAACP.”

Just one day after the Tea Party victory in Missouri, Ennis joined with other CORE activists for a Tea Party event in D.C. the featured prominent black Americans who support the restoration of limited, constitutional government. That’s kind of news that does not fit with the NYT narrative. Neither does the 3-1 vote in favor Missouri’s Proposition C, which is buried on the lower right corner of the newspaper’s national news section today.

In anticipation of major court cases that could cut against the Obama Administration, the NYT has been targeting Chief Justice John Roberts and other right leaning members. However, its editorial in defense of First Amendment freedoms rightly credits the Chief Justice checking congressional excesses and deserves special praise…

Just a few days after a running a front page piece that essentially fixed a bull’s-eye around Chief Justice John Roberts and other more conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court, The New York Times has followed up with an editorial about first amendment jurisprudence that deserves praise and recognition. At issue, is a high court ruling against a congressional law that bans depictions of animal cruelty.

Although the House has introduced a modified version of the legislation, the editorial argues that federal lawmakers have not yet grasped the constitutional points Roberts has made. As repulsive as the images are, it is not permissible for congress to create a new list of First Amendment exceptions.

“Justice Roberts said the court cannot create a new exception to free speech by simply balancing the value of the speech against its harm to society,” the editorial points out. “The First Amendment `reflects a judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the Government outweigh the costs,’ Roberts wrote. `Our Constitution forecloses any attempt to revise that judgment simply on the basis that some speech is not worth it.’ Almost no one would say depictions of animals being crushed or mutilated are worthwhile. The concept is so repulsive that animal rights advocates persuaded a very busy House to pass a new bill outlawing them.”

Animal cruelty does not fit the strict the strict definition of obscenity as it applies to U.S., the editorial explains. “A better analogy would have been to child pornography, in which the act of taking pictures of children is itself illegal,” the Times says. “But Justice Roberts said animal cruelty is not in that category either. The First Amendment is a remarkably fragile institution that does not need more exceptions carved from its meaning.”

Freedom is sometimes a hard item to live with and accept. American citizens from across the political spectrum and from a variety of different religious faiths must sometimes absorb material that offends their sense of decency. The NYT is spot on here with an editorial that strikes all the right notes

Sen. Carl Levin is using phony small business advocates to push for double taxation on U.S. businesses that profit overseas. Even the NYT is forced to concede that the activity is “unusual,” but declines to do any serious investigation. The organizations in question all have far left affiliations suggestive of a big government agenda. That much is evident from just cursory glance of web sites…

Small business groups have joined forces with Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to block offshore tax havens for large companies and wealthy Americans that come at the expense of job producing enterprises, according to The New York Times.  Or have they?

Although Sen. Levin has never been a friend of the free market system in the past, he has suddenly developed a concern for law abiding business owners who lose out when more sizable corporate operations exploit tax shelters, a July report informs readers.

Three non-profit organizations — the American Sustainable Business Council, Business for Shared Prosperity and Wealth for the Common Good — are indentified as the primary authors of a 25 page report that calls out multinational companies for avoiding $37 billion in federal taxes; an estimate that is probably on the low end.

“The campaign is unusual because it is the first time that small businesses have organized to combat offshore tax avoidance and evasion in a significant way,” The Times observes. But instead of investigating the coalition’s self-proclaimed business concerns, the Gray Lady blithely invokes the report’s major recommendations, which are not reflective of free market values.

The operative word here is not “unusual” but duplicitous. All three non-profit groups have tangible links with far left activists who favor greater government control of the private sector, according to new research published by Americans for Limited Government. This places the coalition’s partnership with Sen. Levin into a logical and understandable context that would better serve readers.

Unfortunately, the NYT remains more committed to its big government agenda than it does to straight reporting. Here are some hard facts that should be included in subsequent reports about the coalition and its key players.

Holly Sklar is currently the director of Business for Shared Prosperity. She has served as senior policy adviser for the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign and as an affiliate staff member for Demos, a think tank allied with ACORN and the Institute for Policy Studies. Chuck Collins, who co-founded Wealth for the Common Good has served as an affiliate staffer of Demos and as the Tax Program Director of Business for Shared Prosperity. He is also a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and directs IPS’s Program on Inequality and the Common Good.

The other lead author here, the American Sustainable Business Council, makes no attempt to camouflage its progressive leanings. Its home page includes a long and copious list of allied organizations that advocate for left wing causes. Key personnel include Atlee McFellin, who works as a strategy consultant. McFellin was previously a member of Students for a Democratic Society and the Radical Student Union.

The website for Business and Investors Against Tax Haven Abuse also opens the way for an informative investigation. It contains a list of 25 businesspersons who signed the petition oppose the use of tax havens. An examination of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) records shows that most of the campaign contributions from these same individuals went to Democratic organizations and liberal activist groups.

Why is this not considered news?

The concluding paragraph from the NYT lists some of the major recommendations included in the report that is aimed against larger companies. They are as follows:

“The report calls for laws that would block transfers of intellectual property designed to evade taxes; ban shell corporations that earn profits offshore, even when a corporation’s management team is based in the United States; repeal a rule that allows American corporations to reduce or eliminate their United States tax bills if 80 percent of their business takes place overseas; and set penalties for government contractors that use tax havens.”

Those are not immodest proposals.

The NYT piece suggests any additional tax revenue collected could be used to boost small business. In reality, the anti-profit, anti-capitalist mentality animating this non-profit coalition suggests otherwise.