This Is Going To Be Fun

The Times' editorial board now has a blog. And judging from its first posts, there'll be even less restraint than usual.


(H/t: Mr. Wilson)

Dr. Frieden, Call Your Office

New York City may have already sicced its food cops on anyone using trans-fats, but according to a new report, that may have been premature. John Tierney reports in yesterday's New York Times:

In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream to a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding to his office’s famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop announced that the American diet was a problem of “comparable” magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.

He introduced his report with these words: “The depth of the science base underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for tobacco and health in 1964.”

That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his new book meticulously debunking diet myths, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (Knopf, 2007). The notion that fatty foods shorten your life began as a hypothesis based on dubious assumptions and data; when scientists tried to confirm it they failed repeatedly. The evidence against Häagen-Dazs was nothing like the evidence against Marlboros.

Read the whole thing. It's a fascinating take on how one myth can cascade into conventional wisdom. This seems to be exactly what's happened with fears of secondhand smoke.

Saving Columbia Records

Rick Rubin, as we all know, founded Def Jam records in his NYU dorm room in 1983. He's since gone on to reinvent the careers of The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, the Dixie Chicks and countless other acts. This week's New York Times magazine looks at his latest challenge: saving Columbia Records and, quite possibly, the record industry itself.

The piece is an interesting take on an industry in full-fledged panic mode. With CD sales plummeting and companies like Apple reaping the lion's share of music download profits, once-dominant labels are struggling just to stay viable.

My question: Do we even need major record companies? Rubin seems to think so, pointing to their ability to spread new music to the masses. Yet one of his latest obsessions -- British-born Paul Potts -- has achieved notoriety almost entirely through YouTube. The primary asset of record labels is their ability to set artists up with record contracts, studios, and professional producers. But with technology becoming more affordable, there are countless smaller labels able to perform these same functions (albeit with the exception of a long-term record deal, though those aren't much use if all the major labels fold a few years hence).

The piece reminded me of an oped in today's Journal by Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. (Sony, by the way, owns Columbia.) Lynton argues that contrary to assertions by the likes of Thomas Friedman, globalization is not "making the world more homogeneous." Instead, he says, while Hollywood films once flourished in foreign countries, these same markets are now being dominated by locally produced films. This, one imagines, is once again a product of the increasing affordability of technology, with the expanding wealth afforded by globalized trade, and Hollywood itself responding to new market demands.

Wealth and technology are decentralizing the power once afforded to the big players dominating industries like music and cinema, enabling up-and-coming talents to create mass followings unassisted.

So, can music survive without institutions like Columbia and Capitol? Hard to see why not.

ROC Gets Rolled

"A restaurant that claims to be owned by former Windows on the World workers is 'a hoax' -- because the former World Trade Center employees have been forced out, a lawsuit charges," The New York Post reports today.

In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, a group of former Windows workers said that despite promises, none of the 35 workers who invested hundreds of hours of work into opening the Greenwich Village restaurant Colors has any ownership interest.

Restaurant advocacy group ROC-NY and a group of Italian investors are the owners, and they've stiffed the workers the "cooperative restaurant" was built around, the suit says.

For more on this, I had a more in-depth look into ROC-NY back in March.

If you were thinking of reading today's New York Times to see how they report the story -- seeing as they've feted ROC/Colors with more than a dozen puff pieces over the years -- don't bother. The only mention of the suit comes in a one-'graf Metro Briefing by the AP.

The Most Honest Line Ever To Appear in a New York Times Editorial?

"This page normally has little patience for people who gripe about paying taxes." -- from today's lede editorial on the Alternative Minimum Tax.

Actually, it's still less than totally honest. The page always has little patience for those who gripe about paying taxes. One proffered "fix" of the AMT, for example, is a repeal of the Bush tax cuts.

The Times's Odd Silence

Now that the Duke Three have been cleared, The Neighborhood Retail Alliance's Richard Lipsky wants The New York Times to apologize for its earlier coverage:

Day two after the exoneration of the Duke lacrosse case, and all we have is editorial silence from the self-described paper of record. ... We did have a long front page article on the exoneration yesterday from Duff Wilson, the same reporter who disgraced the paper in August with a 6,000 word miasma of innuendo that manged to keep suspicion alive with unseen "evidence." In yesterday's piece the Duffer avoided any reference to his earlier journalistic malpractice, and went ahead blithely with a piece that underscored the scathing remarks of AG Cooper, words that highlighted the rogue prosecutorial actions of the disgraced Nifong.

In his remarks Cooper emphasized that there were a lot of people who owed the boys apologies. Duff Wilson sits right near the top of the list and he should be joined by his equally disgraceful colleagues from the sports page-Harvey Araton and Serena Roberts. In August, as KC Johnson and Andrea Peyser have pointed out, Wilson had told the Times readers that evidence only the Times was privileged to see established that, although there were some holes in Nifong's case , "there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to bring the matter to a jury."

If in August there was a "body of evidence," but today, according to AG Cooper there is "an overwhelming lack of other evidence," where did Duff's evidence go? Maybe we'll find it with the Iraqi WMDs? And if it doesn't exist, why hasn't the Times corrected this deliberate attempt to inculpate innocent Duke athletes? And lastly, why hasn't the paper fired Wilson and ordered Araton and Roberts to apologize for their slandering of the innocent?

A Few Must-Reads

-- The Washington Post, hardly a lapdog of the president, absolutely eviscerates Madam Speaker Pelosi's diplomatic adventures in Syria.

-- In a "loosely scientific" analysis, Radar details The New York Times' top 10 most error-prone reporters. In rather biting fashion, to boot.

-- Robert Tracinski says the Supreme Court ruled Monday that "the EPA is obliged to treat every substance on earth as a pollutant to be regulated, unless it can demonstrate why that substance is not a pollutant." Well, just the ones involved in any part of the economy, anyway.

Fit To Be Embarrassed

Egged on by Bob Herbert, New York Times letters writers tried their hands this weekend at predicting why the White House is really opposed to congressional representation for D.C. denizens.

The first letter speculates gun-lobby pandering:

What could possibly be the rationale behind denying taxpaying Americans representation in Congress?

Bob Herbert says pressure from the gun lobby helped torpedo recent legislation to give District of Columbia residents just one seat in the House of Representatives, saving President Bush from having to live up to his threat of a veto.

The second speculates racism:

Bob Herbert’s welcome plea to create Congressional representation for the District of Columbia’s nearly 600,000 citizens doesn’t note one key explanation for the administration’s opposition: the District is 65 percent black; its new House member would undoubtedly be black (and a Democrat); and if the new House bill is a steppingstone to true and full Congressional representation — two senators as well — those folks would share the same demographic and political characteristics.

In New Orleans, we’ve already seen the disrespect and neglect the administration shows to black-majority cities. Why would we expect things to be different for Washington?

Must it always be a conspiracy? Why not: Because it's plainly unconstitutional?

Or perhaps the Times' letters editor is secretly a Bush operative, furtively drawing attention to embarrassing displays of Times readers' ignorance.

ROC Lobster

What to do when the restaurant you've created starts collapsing thanks to its untenable, workers-exploiting business model? There's always hope you'll receive the same good fortune as the Noho eatery Colors, which The New York Times recently treated to an advertorial guised as hard news.

Pulling on New Yorkers' 9/11 heartstrings, Metro reporter Emily Vasquez retold Colors' faux-bio: Post-9/11, surviving Windows of the World workers banded together to create a restaurant that would set a new standard for workers -- ownership would take the form of a employee co-op, wages far surpassed the industry average and staffers' ethnic culinary traditions made up the menu.

But somehow, Vasquez reported, business failed to hold steady after the original media-generated fanfare died down. Workers are worried and confused, she said.

What the Times didn't report is that by month's end, former Colors workers are expected to sue its management, alleging this supposed model of workers' rights is actually, in one former co-op-board director's words, "one of the most abusive in the city."

In today's Post, I tell that story:

Colombia-born Orlando Godoy, 54, had been a floor captain at Windows. He joined up with ROC [which runs Colors] post-9/11, and stuck with it even after most other Windows workers left, because Jayaraman was offering a chance for him to realize his lifelong dream: to become a "co-owner" in a new restaurant venture.

Then came a demand to sign a contract in which workers/owners would agree to certain conditions: "paying monthly dues," "attending protests (at least one per campaign)," "supporting workers [at other restaurants] in any dispute with employers," "testifying in favor of worker legislation" and "holding my elected representatives accountable to his/her responsibilities."

Nonplussed - what did any of this have to do with running a restaurant? - Godoy refused to sign; he was subsequently forced out of ROC altogether.

The problem, he said in a recent interview, is that being a part of ROC and its offspring Colors requires a total embrace of Jayaraman's radicalism - even including trips to D.C. to protest the Iraq War.

"Saru thinks of herself as a workers' Che Guevara, but she's really a Stalin," says Behzad Pasdar.

Indeed, Pasdar charges, Jayaraman used ex-Windows staffers as a "golden goose." "She dragged them around town to [raise money from] foundations. But she wouldn't even pay them as promised."

Read it all.

Earlier: Restaurant Revolutionaries

UPDATE: The blog of Kreitzman Mortensen & Borden picks up on the story, adding its own example of labor-related hypocrisy.

Spitzer's "Loopholes"

New York's Business Council calls out Governor Eliot Spitzer and The New York Times for their continued use of the phrase "closing loopholes" when they're actually describing tax hikes:

The New York Times continues its policy of referring to Governor Spitzer's business-tax proposals as efforts to close "loopholes," thus buying into one side's arguments in the debate over tax policy. Our Webster's defines "loophole" as: "an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded." Most of the proposed tax changes in the Executive Budget affect provisions that previous governors and legislators wrote purposefully into the law, and that employers in New York are using exactly as intended. Senate Majority Leader Bruno, Assembly Minority Leader Tedisco, The Business Council and others have pointed these things out repeatedly. Senator Bruno even quoted from a Business Council brochure on the subject during Tuesday's leaders meeting: "These are no mere 'loophole' closings.'" The Times apparently hasn't noticed -- or maybe its reporters just disagree.

Earlier: Read His Lips
Related:
Albany Formula of 3 Men in a Room Expands to 6, With One at Odds with the Rest [NYT]
Bottle Bill Revenue a Bone of Contention [Middletown Times-Herald Record]

The Times Fails Global Warming 101

For a page so sanctimonious about its global-warming campaign, the least The New York Times' editorial page could do is get basic facts right. In an editorial yesterday, the Times begins:

Four major bills have recently been offered in the Senate calling for mandatory controls on carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas.

Wrong. The main global warming gas is water vapor. If the Times' editorialists were referring to anthropogenic gases, they're still wrong. Methane -- almost all of which, incidentally, is not manmade -- contributes to the "greenhouse gas effect" 20 times more than carbon dioxide. (Ironically, the Times' editorial page acknowledged as such less than a month ago.) And even of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, less than four percent is manmade. The rest is a naturally occurring atmospheric element, or is created by the natural world -- you know, forests, and "the environment."

This stuff is Global Warming 101. Which makes the Times' mistake all the more embarrassing -- and revealing.

The Times' Economic Illiteracy

In "Tax Cuts and Consequences" in today's New York Times, the editorialists pick up on a CBO study purporting to show that higher-income earners have disproportionately benefited from the Bush tax cuts. In a strict sense, yes, of course they have. Because higher-income earners make higher-than-average incomes, it's little surprise that slashing 5 percent off the capital gains tax, for instance, will help this income bracket realize a greater tax benefit than those earning less off capital assets.

The article is useful, though, in highlighting just how illiterate the Times is when it comes to economics. The piece leads, for example, by saying: "The tax system in the United States is supposed to mitigate inequality." No, that's what a socialist tax system does. The purpose of America's tax system is to collect enough money to fund the government. Nothing more, nothing less. As Ronald Reagan said, "We cannot have ... a tax policy ... [that] is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure."

The editorial goes on to make the usual claims about how, were only rich people taxed more, income inequality would evaporate. The fact of the matter is, no one hates low taxes more than The New York Times, and this editorial is merely the latest in its campaign to move America toward their envisioned socialist wonderland.

Last year after Congress extended President Bush's tax cuts, The Times’ editorial page was at it again, once again revealing that economic literacy is not among its virtues.

That editorial attempted to disprove the fact that Bush’s lowered rates have generated so much growth in tax revenues that they've more than “paid for” themselves -- something The Times calls “seriously delusional.”

To justify its love affair with high taxes, this is a point The Times belabors constantly. An April 11 editorial wrote, “Contrary to the claims of tax-cut supporters, there is no meaningful evidence that the low investor tax rates spur the economy, and, in so doing, pay for themselves.”

But if anyone is delusional, it’s The Times. One simply needs to look at government receipts to see whether this is true.

In 2003, the year Bush’s “Jobs and Growth” tax act went into effect, the federal government collected a little less than $1.7 trillion in taxes. For fiscal year 2006, the government expects to collect a little less than $2.3 trillion.

That’s an increase of $600 billion. While the slice of the pie might be smaller, the pie has grown much larger. This, bear in mind, has all happened while the other variables affecting the economy besides taxes — disruptions like hurricanes and high energy prices — have been almost uniformly negative.

State revenues have also shot up from the Bush tax cuts, rising 9 percent last year and 8 percent in 2004.

But The Times’ economic illiteracy is far more expansive than misunderstanding tax revenues.

On March 21, The Times weighed in on the federal deficit, arguing Bush’s tax cuts should be repealed. “Republicans want voters to believe that the deficit is the result of spending increases alone — not tax cuts. That’s false. The swing from a $236 billion budget surplus in 2000 to a $371 billion deficit today is a huge deterioration in the nation’s fiscal balance, equal to 5.3 percent of the economy. Of that, fully 62 percent is due to lower tax revenues.”

Claiming that 62 percent of the change in the federal fiscal balance over six years is due to tax cuts makes less than no sense. In 2000, the federal government spent $1,789 billion. In 2005, the federal government spent $2,470.

Yes, it's ridiculous, but consider this: What if Congress had held spending steady since 2000? We’d currently be a more than half-trillion surplus.

It’s not complicated, which makes The Times’ inability to understand all the more embarrassing.

On Jan. 30, 2006, The Times weighed in on America’s “trade deficit.” After warning against allowing foreigners to continue investing in our economy at their current, heavy rate, The Times gets upset that its theory isn’t panning out in reality: “The dollar, which theoretically should have declined under the debt load in 2005, was buoyed last year by foreigners’ willingness to park their cash in higher-yielding dollar-based assets while other developed economies sputtered.”

Perhaps the problem isn’t with foreigners investing their money in America, but with The Times’ theory that doing so causes higher interest rates and thus weakens the dollar. Foreigners invest in American assets because America remains an attractive place to invest. And as Americans become wealthier every day, foreign goods are being imported at record rates. This is why the global economy does well when America does well.

So attacks on the phony “trade deficit” amount to attacks on global wealth creation.

In the same editorial, The Times says the U.S.’ recent powerhouse performance is owed to Americans’ enhanced ability to “borrow and spend” due to “the housing boom.”

Such an explanation mistakes causes with effects. Housing prices increased because demand increased. Demand increased because of Americans’ rising purchasing power, brought on by new wealth and a then-strong dollar.

Arguing that it’s the other way around is a mistake of the highest order.

The Times then compounds the mistake by indulging in another lefty economic canard: “Deeply in debt, individual Americans can’t be expected to keep borrowing and spending.” Accordingly, The Times sees economic collapse on the horizon.

But this is brutally dishonest. Individual debt cannot be reasonably assessed without looking at assets. And here, Americans are going gangbusters. The average American household’s balance sheet — the value of its cash, stocks, bonds, real estate, etc., minus debt — is at a record high. Net household worth is $51 trillion. The Times’ claims notwithstanding, Americans are hardly going broke. ($12.1 trillion of this, according to the American Shareholders Association, is owed to the Bush tax cuts.)

And it gets worse. In a Nov. 15, 2005 editorial on the federal deficit, The Times decried Republican attempts to pass “a new round of ridiculous tax reductions for the wealthy.”

Clarification about tax cuts for “the rich” is overdue. For starters, the reductions of twice-taxed capital — corporate dividends and individual capital gains — benefits the investor class, which now encompasses nearly 60 percent of American households. Surely The Times isn’t suggesting that more than half of America is now “wealthy”?

Besides, the investor class increasingly transcends class barriers. While 93 percent of Americans earning more than $75,000 a year own equities, 56 percent of those earning up to $75,000 own stocks and 30 percent of those making less than $50,000 do, too. These tax cuts help people of all income brackets.

And, if we’re to take seriously The Times’ stated interests in enriching the underclass, increasing their representation in the investor class is a no-brainer.

The high percentage of equity-wielding senior citizens are also well-served by capital market growth; as are owners of 401(k)s, IRAs, pensions, employees of universities with endowments and people economically linked with anyone above. I.e., everyone.

Secondly, the Bush tax cuts did not disproportionately benefit the wealthy, as whines The Times again this week. The nation’s top 1 percent of earners now pay approximately 35% of taxes. Absent the Bush tax cuts, the Treasury Department estimates their share would fall to 30.5 percent. This is consistent with Reagan’s tax cuts, which resulted in the nation’s richest 1 percent seeing their tax obligation climb from 17.5 in 1981 percent to 27.5 percent in 1988. Also, Bush’s tax cuts led to more than two million low-income taxpayers seeing their tax obligations evaporate entirely.

The Times also never misses a chance to call for higher taxes. In a Sept. 19, 2005 editorial on Bush’s pledge to spend “whatever it takes” to rebuild a Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast, The Times insisted that tax hikes were the only “responsible” way to pay for the reconstruction. When Katrina threatened to raise gas prices, the Times recommended higher gas taxes to finance research into alternative fuels. When the higher gas prices failed to ruin the economy as the Times had predicted and receded much earlier than expected, the Times called for gas tax hike to intentionally keep it prohibitively expensive.

The New York Times: All the economic illiteracy that’s fit to print!

Banality-Induced Atrophy

Does anyone else find it curious how The New York Times' letters writers almost always express opinions akin to its editorialists'? Take today's, for instance. In response to New York City's recent ban on trans fats, six letters are printed, yet only one objects to the ban. Four are supportive and the last takes a shot at the tobacco industry. Of course, most letters-to-the-editor writers are also readers of the paper, so it's little surprise how closely related their opinions can be. From my own unscientific research, I'd guesstimate the ban's actual support is somewhere near the opposite, with only one in five in favor.

Having worked with letters to the editor for two of the Times' competitors, the general letters policy seems to be this: so long as a letter is coherent, in response to an article that ran in the paper, and reasonably well written, an effort will be made for its publication. If nearly all letter writers are opposed to the issue at hand, the letters section will reflect that. If the issue's evenly divided, the letters section will reflect that, too. Indeed, even in those rare situations where nearly every letter writer is angry with something the paper has done, an entire letters section will be devoted to printing letters from the offended. Just off the top of my head, The Post last did this when Sean Delonas drew a Page Six cartoon making fun of Cory Lidle shortly after his death. Two years ago, The Sun did the same after Andrew Stuttaford made fun of Ayn Rand. The Journal did this after running an editorial critical of conservative bloggers who unearthed a scandal involving CNN's Eason Jordan (which led to his resignation). Luckily, The Times never seems to have this problem.

Three of today's four trans-fat-ban-supporting letters make the same point: that the ban will improve the city's health and consequently lower health-care costs for all. (Which recalls another letters guideline: generally you try avoiding running multiple letters making an identical point.) Sample:

This comes after the welcome ban on smoking in all public places introduced a few years ago, which has undoubtedly given a respite to the lungs of millions of New Yorkers.

A large number of people working in our city depend on food prepared by a cross section of restaurants. This legislation will have a positive impact on their health in the long term as it steers people into healthy eating habits and staying fit.

If prevention is better than cure, as the medical mantra states, this ban, supplemented by proper enforcement by the city, will eventually ease the burden on our increasingly unaffordable health care system.

Atul M. Karnik
Woodside, Queens

And

The restaurant industry (and the makers of many processed foods) may dismiss the dangers of trans fats, but these fats are responsible for untold sickness and billions of dollars of avoidable health care expenses.

Jack Challem
Tucson

And

When such [obesity] problems rise, so do costs. Guess who pays the Medicaid and Medicare bills? Taxpayers. And yes, those of us with private health care plans will undoubtedly face escalating rates.

David Meyerson
New York

Clearly, this is a popular argument. But is it true? If an "affordable" health-care system is to be the objective, why not encourage smoking and trans-fat eating? That way, people will die young and everyone else will enjoy cheaper health care.

If we're to take this argument at face value, agreeing with the value judgement that ranks "affordable" health care above that of civil liberty, three points must be made: 1) those who do not subscribe to the idea of a public (i.e., collectivist) health-care system are being steamrolled; 2) those who do subscribe necessarily endorse statist decision-making (e.g., any proposal that has some claim on creating a healthier society), and 3) the logical conclusion of point #2 is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- totalitarianism.

That might be what four out of six New York Times readers desire, but I seriously hope that's not a representative sample of the city at large.